How do you become a woman? We decided to start with our origins so we visited five villages in the south of Romania. We discovered a reality very different from the one we idealized in our childhood. It was the harsh reality of non-poetic poverty and of the multiple forms of abuse which replaced normality.

For us Blue Banks means contact with the stories of women who talk about the way they see the world. We want to look at the concrete reality, where every woman lives with herself, where they feel freedom or its absence in their own particular way. We set for ourselves the question of how does one gain that inner freedom which in turn naturally produces the “hormone” of equality in societies in which it is still commonplace for women to be just an object of sexual desire or abuse.

Multimedia exhibition by Andreea Bortun and Brindusa Nastasa

Rezidenta BRD Scena9, Bucharest

20th August - 2nd September 2018

It is a humid summer afternoon in 1976. After their graduation ceremony five young women wander around the streets of Chengdu. It is a special year for China - the year of Mao’s death, the end of the Cultural Revolution. But it is also a special day for the girls - they suddenly find 2 Yuan on the floor. A fortune at that time. They use the money to buy the first ice cream of their lives. Then, they take a group photo in a nearby studio. It makes them so happy, that they decide to meet every ten years to retake the picture.

The 5 pictures and the unique personal archives of the women are a ticket to a time-machine through modern Chinese history. Each ten years, we see the same women in the same positions. The situation, however, changes: No other country has developed as rapidly as China within the last 50 years - from poverty to middle class, from grey Mao suits to colourful, Bohemian dresses.

In the exhibition the visitors experience the story of a fascinating society through photography and a 13 minutes documentary.

Space 101, Rotterdam

25th July - 1st October 2018