The project takes its starting point from the work on reproduction and the unequal payment for women’s labour: Women earn less for the same amount of work and on top of that, they have to care for reproduction and related needs for free. That means they have to withstand a permanent overload and are exposed to balancing an impossible weight of different challenges at the same time. No need to say that this unequal treatment and the disbalances are increasing continuously and affect a majority of people worldwide.
The project takes this impossibility and the ways to stand or hold out the manifold of challenges into account, by working with women from different social and economic backgrounds–inviting them to perform a way of balancing objects that are not only abstractly representing the variety of weights and burdens but they are as well built in a way that makes it even more difficult to keep them up. The everyday of women and their permanent overcharge without appropriate charges will be transformed into a form of body language and performance that will be taped by video.
The video presented next to the objects that the women tried to balance, a kind of sculptural witness and representative of the manifold of burdens that women are confronted with. For me, the architectural motif of caryatides–figures of women as columns carrying the architecture on their heads–are perfect metaphors for carrying unbearable weights. As well ancient and contemporary ways of cultural habits like women carrying loads on their heads, represent the continuity of the burdens that society loads onto the shoulders and minds of women, permanently exposed to losing balance and collapse.

Exhibitions:
2021 Festival „Sommer in Floridsdorf“, Vienna
2021 I Know I care / VBKOe, Vienna

Credits:
Performers: Mirjana Mustra, Aklima Aqubal, Sofia Vertletskaya, Sara Hawy
Concept / Camera / Sound / Post-Production: Kristina Cyan
Photo: Kristina Cyan, Gregor Neupert
Thanks to: Wolfgang Gosch, QUESTION ME & ANSWER project