In vendar me briga / And yet I do bother

Year: 2019
Technique: 15 drawings, ink on paper, 42 x 30 cm

The series of drawings was created in the third edition of the exhibition Briga me za konec sveta / I can’t be bothered with the end of the world (Ravne Gallery, 2019). The title In vendar me briga / And yet I do bother is a response not only to the exhibition’s title, but also to the previous series of drawings Briga me … / I can’t be bothered …, which is also on display in the same exhibition. The motifs of the previous drawings represent scenes from everyday life in which we are preoccupied by ourselves and our own problems. The wider social context doesn’t touch us. Despite the irony, the title of the exhibition communicates a certain level of resignation and above all emphasises our inactivity. With the new series, I set out to search for images of inspiration. I found them in photos of protests in which women are in the foreground. In different times and places, they have organised around various themes and used their own bodies in the struggle for social change. Some of the protagonists on the photos are known (suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, civil rights activist Rosa Parks, the anti-war collective Žene u crnom (Women in Black), activist for Palestinian rights Ahed Tamimi, climate change activist Greta Thunberg), others are mostly unknown protesters. Their photographs have become a symbol of the fight against oppression and have gone viral online and in the media. Regardless of the complex backgrounds and what we know or don’t know about the contexts of how these photographs came to be, for me, these images represent the hope that, in spite of everything, it’s still possible to change the world.

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested at Buckingham Palace, London, 1914

Rosa Parks, Montgomery bus, USA, 1956

Danuta Danielsson, Neo-Nazi demonstration, Sweden, 1985

Unknown girl, demonstration in front of the Parliament building, Ljubljana, 1991
Text on the drawing: I want my brother back home!!!!
(Thanks to Muzej novejše zgodovine/National Museum of Contemporary History)