The tenth “PitchWise” Women’s Art and Activism Festival was opened yesterday in Sarajevo. A movie about the ten years of “PitchWise” was screened to open the Festival. After the movie, they presented the artistic works and photographs from various artists and activists, who use their artistic expression to question socially imposed standards and patterns.
After that, there was a panel discussion held with all the participants and representatives of every activism festival in the region.
This year’s “PitchWise” hosted 75 artists, activists and theoreticians participating and representing their works, and 120-130 activists from B&H and the region.
On behalf of the Foundation called “Cure” (The Girls) which is the organizer of the Festival, Vedrana Frašto explained for Klix.ba, that the Festival originated from a desire to contribute to Women’s Art and Activism in the B&H society.
“This represents a great opportunity for all these women to meet and talk about their experiences. The exchange of experiences and the connection of women belonging to all age groups is very important to us”, as Frešto said and she added that it is extremely important that the transition and transfer of knowledge and experience exists because the coming generations cannot work without the background of a more experienced one.
“The aim is to connect women, to see how much we have in common. We are here with only one aim, and that is a life with equal possibilities for everyone regardless of sex, sexual orientation, race, religion or nationality etc.”, as Frešto said.
During four days of the Festival, there will be 12 exhibitions, 11 workshops, 4 panel discussions, 2 street performances, 2 indoor shows/performances, a book promotion and an evening program in Criterion with concerts and parties.
You can see full schedule and program for the Festival here:
Frešto talked about the significance of the Women’s Art Festival in the context of modern society, highlighting the reason of why is it essential to have female voice heard and women to be seen in a society.
“People have certain prejudices and stereotypes towards the things they don’t see in public. It is very important for the Women’s Art to go public and to be seen, to get people acquainted with the fact that there is Women’s Art in Sarajevo also, not somewhere out there”, Frešto said.
She added that the majority of people don’t support it, but there is also an articulation of those who do. The situation is slowly changing. What I know for sure is that in 2006 or 2007 we had the street activity related to stopping the violence against girls and women. At that moment people thought that the violence doesn’t exist or nobody cares about it. But thanks to female non-governmental organizations and media the people’s consciousness started to change. When we had the same activity in 2012 we could notice the different attitudes – violence exists, it is not a private thing and it needs to be stopped. The most difficult thing is to change the people’s consciousness and in every ten years you can see a small change but yet, it is there”, Frašto said.
(Source:klix.ba)
