Punishment Without a Crime (Kazen brez zločina)

A critique of misogynist social values, Punishment Without a Crime is based on actual historical events. Immediately after the liberation in 1945 there was a brutal cutting of the hair of several ten thousand women who socialised or flirted with occupation soldiers. This was reason enough for their public humiliation and punishment. Hair cutting, whilst a completely ordinary action, is under such a perspective transformed into a form of social castration of women as well as a mechanism for the consolidation of established social relations between genders. The wall painting with hair, includes scenes of violent hair cutting which manifest social power over an individual and the power of men over women alike. Cut hairs are metaphorical testimonies of women's humiliation and degradation. With photo-documentary as the aesthetic platform and patriarchal violence over the innocent the subject, this allows the authoress to unravel and problematise such historical traumas, cultural restrictions and ideological controversies. (Elena Fajt)

Organisation: City of Women; In collaboration with; Škuc Gallery.