April 10, 7 pm

Bojana Pejić/Mare Tralla

Heroine of work

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Bojana Pejić
Heroine of Work – Today: From ”Red Love” to the CODE:RED

“Heroine of Work” is a term that has a special meaning in East European countries and is associated with practices of state-Socialism. The title is directly inspired by a cartoon published in the Moscow newspaper “Izvestia” in 1992: the caricature is based on Vera Muchina’s famous sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Girl” (1937), which is often considered to be the icon of the Communist age. This allegorical ensemble produced in the age of High Stalinism, personifies two crucial ideals instituted after the October Revolution: one was the historical alliance of the working class and peasantry and the other was gender egalitarianism. In revisiting the Communist icon, caricaturist Chabanov adapted the Muchina’s pair to the new, post-Socialist times: the collective farm girl, who was earlier considered to be a “Hero of (Socialist) Work” is now shown as a prostitute.
The lecture will offer a parcours through visual representations (paintings, posters, films, videos, installations, public art) that deal with prostitution, sex work, trafficking in women, forced migration, mail-order brides, and “feminization of poverty”. Starting with a historical introduction, the major part of this presentation will focus on contemporary art productions exploring the East-West constellation as it appears in today’s Europe. The historical changes that occurred after the “Wende” had a specific dynamics which is different from the processes occurring in the other parts of the world; our European situation is still conditioned by the East-West relations inherited from the Cold War and the dualism between ‘real’ capitalism and ‘real’ Socialism; and finally, that the issues of women’s (illegal) migration and trafficking in women are closely linked to the German reunification and recent reshaping of Europe’s borders.

Bojana Pejić, born in Belgrade, is an art historian and lives in Berlin. She has edited numerous books and is a regular contributor to several art magazines. In her PhD she dealt with “Politics of representation and representations of politics in the public sphere in the SFR Yugoslavia”. 1999–2001 her exhibition “After the Wall. Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe” was presented in Stockholm, Budapest and Berlin. Being a visiting professor at the University of Oldenburg she organized the conference “Heroine of work – today. Sex work, feminisation of European migration and visual representations.”

Mare Tralla
The Heroine of Post Socialist Labour
EST/UK 2004 | Video | 3:55min

During the Soviet time women were celebrated as work-heroines: milkmaids, tractor drivers, factory workers etc. Feminine aspects of everyday life were then overlooked. Therefore it is not surprising that women in new independent and capitalist societies in Eastern-Europe are obsessed with the notion of feminine beauty. The “working” women who achieve super-model like body and looks are the new post-socialist work-heroines. In my video I look ironically on this new work, compare it with the old heroines work to see if they are both equally hard. (Mare Tralla)

Mare Tralla, born 1967, is an Estonian media artist and organiser, who lives and works in London and Tallinn. In 1995 she was a co-curator of the first Estonian feminist art exhibition “est.fem”. In 2000–2003 she was professor of new media at the Estonian Academy of arts, in 2001 she co-curated new media conference and exhibition “Interstanding4. EndRepeat”. www.tralladigital.co.uk