In war times, art remains the only hope and means of last resort. All the more so in the case of work made by women artists, because women and artists are those who suffer most from the adversities of wars. No wonder that Frauenmuseum Bonn – an institution dedicated solely to promoting women artists – organised an exhibition on peace, presenting various visions of hope, solidarity, compassion and love.
Steine Räumen für den Frieden (Removing Stones for Peace) is a result of intensive work of a group of international curators group coordinated by Marianne Pitzen, the museum director, who runs the place with exceptional love and care. For the first time in recent history Georgian women artists selected by Lily Fürstenow-Khositashvili, the co-curator of the exhibition, have had the chance of their lifetime to show their pieces to the museum audiences within this unconventional display of art.
Side by side with installations, videos, paintings and slogans by women artists representing the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Afganistan, the Ukraine, Iran, Syria and more war-affected parts, artists from the Georgian Artists House selected by the curators showed their paintings on the theme of Medea.
This is the second Medea exhibition curated by Lily Fürstenow-Khositashvili exploring this centuries-old legend dating back to antiquity. Wars, refugees and prejudices against women persisted in ancient times the way they persist today. It is the task of art to revive our cultural memories in order to learn from the past for the sake of the present. The myth of Medea originated in Georgia during the reign of King Ayeti in his Kingdom of Kolchis, in times immemorial, and has fascinated the minds of people since then across Europe.
Who wouldn’t know of Pasolini’s film version of Medea: the jealous and passionate character incarnated by the legendary Maria Callas, or the numerous operas created by the French Barocque and Italian composers who portrayed this mythical princess of Kolchis as a dark sorceress and killer. Little is known, however, about the true story of Medea that is irrevocably connected to Kolchis, now western Georgia.
In the process of preparing this exhibition, the curator’s research revealed that, according to scientific sources, Medea never murdered her children out of jealousy of Jason, her husband, who left her for another woman.
According to Robert von Ranke-Graves in his Greek Mythology from 1960 issued in Hamburg by Rowolt, Medea’s children were killed by the Corinthians because they hated her, since she was a refugee, a foreigner in Greece, and a woman. Yet as the facts show, the people of Corinth wouldn’t wish to go into history as murderers of the under-aged, so they offered a considerable sum of cash to the famous Euripides to change the facts and present in his play Medea as the mother of all the evils.
Few might know that, consequently, Jason was punished by the gods for his betrayal of Medea, and that he died alone, forgotten by gods and folks alike, whereas Medea was granted eternal life and rule over the Elysian fields. Since the winners of the ancient Greek tragedy contests acquired the status of religious truths, Euripide’s version of Medea acquired the status of the unquestionable established narrative, leaving the truth in dark oblivion.
For Georgians, however, Medea has always been a healer and a caring, loving mother, which is obvious from the impressive paintings made by Georgian women artists portraing her on the shores of the Black Sea, picking medicinal plants from the Kolchian meadows or brewing her healing potions to cure the sick.
Spreading the truth questioning and reframing conventional male-dominated narratives is one of the important tasks of contemporary art and would save us from conflicts by producing knowledge and new perspectives. It is within the powers of arts to reveal the truth and within the possibilities of curating to cure the evils, as the Latin for “cura” is “cure.” Medea – the Healer has been realised in close cooperation with artists Ia Arsenishvili, Mze Berdzenishvili, Irma Bibiluri to name but a few, whom we’d like to sincerely thank here.
To see the works as well as exhibition views head to www.e-mergingartists.art, or see the whole thing at the Frauenmuseum Bonn to experience female creativity and peace activism. Steine Räumen für den Frieden continues till March 8, 2025. Frauenmuseum. Im Krausfeld 10, 53111 Bonn.
By Lily Fürstenow
