LIINA SIIB
A Woman Takes Little Space

The central piece of the exhibition A Woman Takes Little Space, a photo series of the same name, shows women who in their ordinariness don’t get noticed or who are not seen as standing out from their environment and their role, women who work low-paying jobs that nonetheless differ in prerequisites and demands, whether as a service industry worker, a kitchen or factory labourer, a clerk or editor, a drafter or a musician. 

Most of the workplaces – sales booths, behind counters, sewing tables and office corners – have been set up, with minimum expenditure, in as small a space as possible and the photos stress this restraint and lack of space, as well as the attitudes characteristic of all the women: matter-of-factness, gentle forbearance, and both the quiet pride taken in one’s work and the state of being ruled by the situation. Although almost all the women are connected to many people by their work, none of the photos show interaction. What has been highlighted is that certain moment of silence, of waiting or of being absorbed in something, a standstill moment during the everyday routine that brings forth every woman’s relationship with her environment, the sense of situating herself, and the (more or less conscious) way of presenting herself.  

The photo series was inspired by a claim made a few years back in the Estonian press in articles about gender equality that women are used to less space (and less pay) than men. Even if these kinds of attitudes are suppressed during open debates in the name of political correctness, they still function quietly and in real life, surviving through multi-faceted mechanisms, including the participation of women themselves through acceptance of the role offered by discriminatory ideologies. Nevertheless, Siib does not depict these women in a homogeneous way or as playing a single role as victims, martyrs or heroines. Instead, she seems to be interested in individuality, in how the generally similar pattern shows in a somewhat different way in every individual case, in how for these women being self-aware and sensing one’s position has always been shaped by many factors – upbringing, experiences in the former Soviet society and in the early capitalist Estonia, social background, nationality, media images etc. – that form a combination that is always somewhat different for each woman. All of the parts of the series simultaneously both code and decode each other, while also refuting and contesting. 

The main characters in the pictures are not subordinated as an anonymous mass to the role model of the woman taking up little space and asking for little pay, even though they create several parallels and moments of recognition. With the conversation of the photos as a background, some deviations that interrupt the general rhythm and scheme, and activate the viewer, become especially interesting. Photos with just a room with some signs of the worker make one imagine the person who this place might belong to or who might belong to this place. Photos showing the woman in her spare time – where she is visible in a store mirror, rides in a streetcar or sits in a cafe – present a surprisingly similar attitude, the same matter-of-factness and forbearance necessary in meeting her duties at work. This can even be noticed with representatives of some of the more ‘colourful’ professions (e.g. a call girl and a model) catching one’s eye as they exist in a situation of general restraint, and their use of space still seems to be as economical as with clerks or factory workers. A photo of the artist herself in her new studio some time after having moved out of the working and living place she had been in for seven years, a ten-square-meter kitchen of a studio flat, becomes the seeming hub of the series. 

Anu Allas