Standing on a pedestal in the middle of a public square, clearly visible to everyone who passes by - women were able to try that out yesterday at the Miesbach market square.
Miesbach - The artist Sofia Horaz invited to the action “Women on Pedestals”.
After two hours, she herself was surprised and “very enthusiastic” that so many had participated.
The starting point for the campaign was that "women in public spaces do not stand on pedestals," explains Horace.
"And if they do it, it is not for what they have done or achieved."
The focus is then often on the female body.
On her homepage she goes into even more detail: researchers, rulers, politicians and artists rarely made it onto a pedestal, despite an impressive lifetime achievement, she writes.
“In squares and in parks there are mostly monuments of men.” And when a woman is “on top”, then mostly lightly dressed and as a symbol - “for example Germania as a representation of the empire or Victoria on the Berlin Victory Column, the victory embodied over France ”.
Repetition also conceivable in Holzkirchen and Bad Tölz - "really nice action"
With the campaign, Horace did not only want to draw attention to the "extensive invisibility of historical women in public space".
It is also about women in the here and now, in normal everyday life.
Horace would like these women, standing on a pedestal, to listen to themselves and feel what that does to them.
So yesterday Horaz set up a podium at the corner of Fraunhoferstrasse and Heimbucherwinkl and asked women to climb up.
“Some were shy, at first didn't dare and climbed up,” she reports.
Most of them would even have taken a selfie or had a photo taken with their cell phone.
"It was a really nice action," enthuses Horace.
So nice that she is now considering doing it again in Holzkirchen and Bad Tölz with Luise O'Connor and Elke von Soden, who supported her.
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(cmh)