Women (Up) Rising!

Here it comes again: International Women’s Day! With all the possibilities of us being in conflict with ourselves: over what it might mean, how much we need it, if it’s too unsettling, if it brings out dreams or denial in us, or whether we think there are more important dislocations and oppressions or systemic problems to start with.

There might be: such as, was Honduran indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres murdered because she was a woman, or because she stood up for indigenous people’s rights? The impact of ‘race’, the anatomy of capitalism… of course it’s both! or All!  But which dimension is more readily understood, acknowledged, or politically sanctioned? That’s what’s now called Intersectionality, a term  that some people, and some women, find difficult to understand, and other people/women live with on a daily basis, and therefore we find this quite obvious. Such as: Am I, Ursula, more of a woman or more of a foreigner? Of course i can’t be just-a-bit-of-a-woman, so obviously I am both, but people per se find the foreigner-bit of me more startling. That’s why they would ask when i am going back…and all that! Not all people do, but it is nevertheless quite a regular feature of life. So here is identity!

It excites me that African American scholar-lawyer Kimberley Crenshaw, who coined and introduced the term intersectionality to feminist theory, will speak at the WOW (Women of the World) festival at London’s South Bor ank Centre this coming Saturday, the 12th March, from 2.15! I’ll have to leave early because at 3 a workshop by Bodies will start, owhich includes a theatre performance by Esther Bunting (“Girl in Suitcase!”), with Sabine (dance etc.) and myself (poetry etc.). Further, the workshop is about life modelling and art! So come and draw or model or both! Let’s reclaim ourselves for ourselves as independent agents (of freedom).

So it’s about visibility! On this note there was a Visible Women Festival last weekend at Redlees Art Studios, which produced fruitful and thriving art and debate. Me and Gestalt Glass artist Keira McLean did a Hand Poem Double Act – see pic. And underneath is my  poem which i wrote specifically for the Visible Women festival, called Visible Making, and 

here (next two pics) are two images of women i love, one a sculpture in Albacete, Spain,

(right – i love how she seems to have a heart in her belly, from the colouring of the stone!) and the other one in Tampere, Finland (reaching the clouds!). Just two examples of many… and I should know the name of the sculptors… will try and find out!    Happy IWD! u.t.