Sufantazuota moteris

ENThe exhibition 'Woman's Time: Sculpture and Cinema' that was held at the National Art Gallery from 21 May to 5 September 2010 (curators Laima Kreivytė and Elona Lubytė, consultant Giedrė Jankevičiūtė) shows the changes in the perception of the woman during the Soviet period. The location chosen for the exhibition was ideal: the former Revolution Museum, even if reconstructed (and it has been reconstructed perfectly and preserves the main features of the late Soviet architecture). Most of the works displayed at the exhibition still inhabit my memory. They are sculptures in public places. Talking of the fantasized woman, we should remember that in this respect the Soviet epoch is not special in any way, even if it is linked to lies and propaganda art: the fantasies about the woman are as old as art itself. In Soviet Lithuanian art. the woman's body was mostly the means to express grand ideas like the strength of the Soviet people, the bright life of a collective farm, happy students or'eternal femininity'conveyed through the image of the woman as an object of lust and a fertile mother. Motherhood, however, is presented as an outcome and not as a process: the eye is caught by the effort characteristic of Soviet society to depict mothers with babies or young children as the country's happy future, but to abstain from depicting pregnant women since their bodies'do not conform with the norm'and simultaneously point to the woman's sexuality.The idea to arrange the exposition in the entrance hall of the gallery left an ambiguous impression. On the other hand, it was a realistic reflection of the woman's fate and share in the patriarchal world of art: as though exhibited but very inconveniently, as though a whole but dispersed, as though adored and put on pedestals, but second rate nevertheless. And indeed, women are multifunctional mechanisms that at times make the effort to concentrate on one activity and produce some minor thing. This was confirmed by the scarcity of works by women sculptors, and it is understandable: in Soviet times, sculpture was not a woman's field of art. Sculpture was socially engaged, too: producing numerous monuments of Lenin was considered a highly important - if not the most impor tant - objective of this kind of art. Since in the patriarchal system women were considered the guardians of morals, the public sphere was not suitable for them as it was immoral, dirty and dangerous to their virtue. Society did not wish to see more women engaged in, let us say, politics, because it was a 'dirty'field just like any other related to power and money. Today we can be proud that women remained less stained'and did not produce numerous Lenins and Stalins: their colleagues-contemporaries simply protected them from the royalties paid for the monuments of the leaders. It was slightly more difficult to grasp the depiction of the woman in documentary cinema: exhibition halls are not the most suitable place to watch films. For this reason the curators chose a variant that was more suitable for the exhibition space: only fragments of the documentaries were shown, while the whole plot was given in the description. And yet there was that feeling that the work of Živilė Pipinytė, the compiler of this part of the exhibition, could not be fully appreciated. However, it was very likely a hint to the next time in a different place.