gestures of oppression
January - May 2023
Which memories are ours to remember? Which past experiences are ours or have been told to us so much that they feel like they’re ours? This is a project about my post-memory of communism in Romania and was the starting point for my interest of delving in the past with my practice.
Postmemory, as described by Marianne Hirsch in the first chapter of her book “The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust” (2012) is a constructed memory of the generation that comes after a personal, collective, cultural trauma. It is a memory compounded of stories, images, and behaviours that are transmitted to this second generation so deeply and affectively that they seem as their own (Hirsch, 2012, p. 5). For me, the stories my parents and grandparents have told through the years have blended with my own and have shaped me into who I am today as much as I have shaped them in the form they now hold in my mind.
This project combines my bits and pieces from the curious mechanism that the human memory is and compiles small gestures of oppression or censorship. From my grandma squeezing my hand as I was telling a “shameful” story to her acquaintance to vague memories of my other grandma telling me how left-handed people would have their left hand tied to the back of the chair during the communist regime. As a starting point, this project came to life from my fascination with the preference for long or short hair being passed down through the women's lineage of my family. Because my grandmother was not allowed by her mother to have long hair as a child, she would not allow my mother to have short hair. And because my mother was not allowed to have short hair as a child, I always had a short bob growing up. Thus, I find much tension in the things that are not expressed but passed down.
My grandmother guides me towards the back of the bus while her warm hand softly holds my tiny fingers. I take a seat and breathe in the exciting experience of using what feels like a gigantic truck to get back home. As my mind slowly drifts away and my eyes gaze at the fast-paced sights of Pitești, this small Romanian town where my grandma lives, I suddenly awake from my daydreaming and see a young woman greeting us. I quickly learn that she is a former student of my grandmother and will accompany us for the rest of the trip.
She seems nice and friendly. I want us to be friends, so I tell her a story from my latest trip with my family to Skiathos, Greece. We were staying at a beautiful villa surrounded by orange trees and a pool with a bar. The owner of the villa would usually be behind the bar and ask us whether we wanted fresh orange juice from his orange trees -for what seemed at the time too much per glass for my parents. Therefore, the family friends we were with urged us, the kids, to quickly steal some oranges and make our own juice.
Promptly realising the story I was telling, my grandmother forcefully squeezes my hand. I stop the story, look her in the eyes and don’t really understand what she means. My eight-year-old mind cannot comprehend the subtlety. So, I keep going and tell my newly-made friend about our adventure of stealing the precious fruits. My grandmother keeps squeezing my small hand and I see how her fingers leave white traces on mine, which quickly turn back to their initial state. I don’t understand what she is trying to hint or why her cheeks are a rosy colour now. She politely stops me and informs her former student we have to go. The next stop is ours.
I have practised so many times for this day. I have pretended so many times I was a student at home, with my legs floating in the space between two stairs, one acting as my desk and one as my seat. I feel ready for my first writing class. How hard could it be?
All of us are wearing our blue uniforms; girls have shirt-like dresses with white and blue squares and a beautiful round and sometimes embroidered collar. On top, we all have a blue apron with white lining. Tights, black shoes and some girls have white flowers or cute pins in their hair. Boys wear white shirts and navy pants. One thing we all have are small yellow bows on our chests for our teacher to recognise us.
As we take our seats and prepare our lined notebooks, our teacher starts explaining that today we will start the exciting journey of writing. We will soon learn the letters, and in no time, we will be able to read. How exciting! I feel so nervous. However, she tells us that all great journeys start with a first step, so ours will be drawing small symbols today. We start with some vertical lines that will soon be the foundation of many letters. As a matter of habit, as I love to draw, I pick up the fountain pen with my left hand and start today’s task. The muffled voices of my colleagues fill the room, but I try to focus on making the prettiest little sticks, I am sure my teacher will notice that I am very experienced with drawing. As she makes her way through the rows of desks, she arrives at ours. As I am seated on the aisle side, she notices me first. I see her frowning from the corner of my eye, but I keep going. After a minute, she says: “Can you please show me you can’t draw with your right hand?” Confused, I look her in the eyes. She repeats, “I see you’re using your left hand but I want to see whether you cannot use the right.”
“This doesn’t feel ok.”, I tell myself. But I do as she says. Wobbly sticks come out of my pen while my right hand is struggling to draw something. Maybe if I make them extra ugly, she will let me use the hand I am most comfortable with.