AS LONG AS WOMEN HAVE TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHTS MEN HAVE ALWAYS HAD, I WILL BE A FEMINIST.

"For most men, all achievements are always taken for granted. They enjoy rights based on their sex alone, for which women have had to fight for decades with great difficulty," Cibulka explains the core idea of this SOLANGE sentence. "Most of them are not even aware of it, because they grow up with it and take everything for granted. With this sentence we want to point out the still existing imbalance, to sensitize, to stimulate discussions, in which areas there is still a great need for action", the artist continues. In what place could this be more appropriate than a place named after one of the icons of the women's movement, Simone de Beauvoir. What rights is Cibulka specifically concerned with?

• How many men are fighting to reconcile work and family life?
• How many men are fighting for the same low salary as their female colleagues?
• How many men are afraid of being harassed at night when they walk home alone from a pub?
• How many men experience sexualised violence on social media?
• How often are men in the minority on committees, juries, supervisory boards, etc.?
• How many men are single parents?
• How many men are threatened by poverty in old age?
• How many men care for their relatives?

... the list could be continued at will

Through these reversals it becomes immediately clear why it will probably be necessary for a long time to formulate feminist demands and place them in a media-effective manner. Cibulka and her team are not concerned with accusing men, but with initiating a dialogue through discussions in order to build bridges between these very different worlds of experience and to generate understanding. The goal is a win-win situation for all: women should finally achieve what they have always been entitled to, and men may learn to share power and influence. The problems that exist can only be solved together. The artist and her team are convinced that a fair distribution in the professional and private spheres (where women continue to do a large part of unpaid work) is beneficial to all.

About the Project:

We explore this fundamental question in our project SOLANGE (German for: as long as). Following one of feminism’s key issues – the quest for social justice – our project targets a broad social spectrum of gender-specific inequalities. The starting point of our research are interviews conducted with local people, asking them how long they will be feminists. We then create sentences based on their answers and embroider them onto dust nets in meter-high letters made of pink tulle. We will indeed present controversial slogans that address current problems, but also imply hope for a change. It is a kind of constructive provocation that wants to withhold blame or judgement. By using the public space for these messages, we declare it a political space. For two years, we have been wrapping construction sites (a traditionally male dominated space) with dust nets that are embroidered (a traditionally female dominated craft). The applied sentences point unmistakably at the existing imbalances. Every construction site has its own challenges and shapes the Solange-sentence and vice versa.

- Katharina Cibulka and the Solange Team