An brass object, with diameter 30 cm, implemented in cooperation with Magdalena Maślerz.
Astrolabe is a device that maps celestial spheres to a flat surface. According to legend, it was invented by hypatia – the last scholarchini of the Platonic Academy, brutally murdered and quartered by the Alexandrian Bishop Cyryl from Aleksandria.
I decided to reconstruct this primitive astronomical computer as a navigation device based on the sirens’ voice. Limbum – a ring around the main material sheet MATER (biological sex), points to four sides of the world on which I put four trends of feminism. At different times they called themselves differently, invariably being the same: women demanding voting rights, a decent position in the world. On the openwork part of RETE, determining the location of the brightest stars, I built grandmothers on the firmament – these are philosophers omitted because of gender in the history of Tatarkiewicz’s philosophy, which probably everyone was studying. Those are: Hannah Arendt, Edith Stein, Simona Weil, Simona de Beauvoir, Heloiza, Aspazja, Hypatia, Fajnarete.
In addition, I placed landmark dates on the bottom of RETE: 1918 women’s electoral rights in Poland and England, 1945 women’s electoral rights in France, 1967 women’s electoral rights in Switzerland, 1977 first women’s magazine, 1971 first home for beaten women in Europe. The moving hint refers to the myth of Amor and psyche – one of the largest sources of knowledge about women’s psyche . It reminds that the human body has not changed significantly since antiquity, so the unconscious processes that rule the human soul should be similar. The basic human needs, both physical and spiritual, have not changed. On the back of the astrolabe I put a half clock, where instead of hours there are walls of the dice with distorted graphic notation. With this treatment, I would like to draw attention to human, learned and experienced patterns of thinking.
