The space we walk through is never neutral. Perhaps if you’re an heterosexual white male you might think the opposite, or more likely you’ve never thought about it. It’s not a matter of being guilty, it’s the air we breath, it’s the society we live in. What you haven’t noticed is that our cities are crowded with interdictions, symbolic walls, boundaries, no trespassing signals. It’s something that you learn quite quickly growing up, you internalize this set of unwritten rules: “don’t go there” “can’t stay in this place alone” “don’t pass by there with that dress”, I imagine you are already continuing the list.
I’m a urban trekker, I like to explore the city I live in, often trying bending these rules, I tend to go in places where usually people don’t go unless they live there.
A couple of months ago I was with my bike, passing by some neighbourhoods of Brussels, nearby avenue Stalingrad and other areas between Schaerbeek and Saint Josse, bars and other shops were full of people and they were all men. Walking back home I only had one question in mind “Where are all the women?”.
This question kept coming to my mind and I said to myself that I should start doing some research to get some perspective on this matter. But with lockdown and restrictions I couldn’t do much so I put it aside for a while.
Then art came, once again to put new lymph to my idea of research. I visited the Mu.ZEE in Ostende during the holidays and there I discovered the work of Randa Maroufi in the exhibition Being Places which addressed the same topic in a series of photographies called Les Intruses (The Intruders). Before reading the description I had the sense that something was strange about these pictures and immediately the question came back “Where are all the women?”. Thanks to Randa Maroufi they were there, hanging out in a bar in Saint Josse where a football match is on the television, in a kebab place, a barber shop in Paris.
Maroufi hacked the invisible yet well-known norm of those spaces, she infiltrated women in places that usually are men’s jurisdiction, they also mime attitudes and gestures that you’d see among men, playing cards in a bar for instance. The fact that looking at these pictures, even if you don’t know what it is about, you feel that something is odd, out of place, it means that the gender division of space in the city is something that maybe you’re not aware of but we all go along with it in an unconsciuous way.
This series of photos is a poignant visual representation of the feminist’s slogan “Safe streets are made by the women who walk through them”, an important claim used against the conservative rethoric of more cameras and military on the streets for women’s safety. It is fundamental to dismantle the culture of “you had it coming!” and stop focusing on the invididual behaviors and accidents and pay attention at the systemic extent of violence and oppression women, in this case, suffer.
The question “Where are all the women” is still open and so Maroufi’s project as she plans to infiltrate new urban contexts.
UNcontemporary Art 