Village without women is an ongoing collaboration project by artist Kaisa Eiche and Kadi Estland that was created due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The exhibition combines photography and poetry and it has been exhibited in Hobusepea gallery (Tallinn) in winter 2022 and in Kanal gallery (Võru) in spring 2023.
In the exhibition at Photo North – Northern Photographic Centre’s lobby/foyer gallery focuses on photographic representation . The series reflects the associations of fearing the war, but is also about women and their roles during the war time – how are women seen in the midst of war and how is it to live in a constant fear of war in Estonia, a country that has a shared border with the Russian Federation?
Eiche’s project started in spring 2022 with the dual-portrait photograph I do not raise my son for war of the artist and her then 5 year-old son standing in a basement. Later, the artist contacted her friends, women with children, and asked them to show her their shelters, their hiding places, if there ever should happen something similar as has happened in Ukraine.
The exhibition comprises of artworks depicting women and their children in their basements. How is it to raise children in these patriotic times? What kind of associations arise from Estonia’s past as being occupied and forced to give away their sovereignty as a nation that was part of the Soviet Union for 50 years? What kind of misogynistic culture does the war cultivate when raping is used as one of the war strategies to humiliate and victimize women and children?
Kaisa Eiche: Village without women
29.4.–11.6.2023
Photo North – Pohjoinen valokuvakeskus, aulagalleria
Picture: Kaisa Eiche, From the series Village without women (2022)
