Gentle Women is a duo founded in 2008; its members, Eugenia Lapteva and Alexandra Artamonova, are based in Kaliningrad. The group systematically examines gender issues and explores the whole complex of myths, ideas, and common beliefs about women and femininity. The duo uses performance, video, and actionism in their artistic practice, studying the feminine nature through the transformation of rituals. They often choose a natural environment for their actions, acknowledging its important role in the process.
Recommended by Anna Zekria
Banding, 2008 (with Masha Kovaleva, Masha Timonina) is an ironic exploration of modern wedding rituals: dressing up and taking photos with tourist attractions. The “brides” also asked male passersby to put rings on their fingers. Photo: Alexander Lubin
Still from Art of Braiding, 2018. Playing on a Russian word “kosa,” which can refer to a braid, a scythe, or a spit of land, the Gentle Women explore the deep symbolic meaning of women’s hair
Still from Bread and Salt, 2009. Bread and salt are symbols of hospitality in Russian culture. Here, the bread is fed to the insatiable seagulls, and the salt is thrown into the low-salinity Baltic Sea
Dirt, 2010. Young women living on the Curonian Spit were considered the worst brides: the local soil of was infertile and they were almost dowerless. They usually went to the Lithuanian side of the bay to get married and rarely visited home afterwards
Dirt, 2010. These young women wore black dresses as their wedding gowns. In this performance, the duo imagines the ritual of bidding farewell to the home and the native soil before leaving and getting married
Dirt, 2010. Shot by Alexander Lubin. Edited by Serge Sorokin
Ice, 2012. The Russian expression “to be flopping like a fish on the ice” means to struggle desperately. Here, a young woman in a white dress, a symbol of unwanted femininity, is trying to break the ice just as desperately
Milk for Vera, 2015. When Eugenia’s daughter was born, she was taken to the ER, so she couldn’t see her child. Photo: Anton Khlabov
Milk for Vera, 2015. For a month, she was saving her breastmilk, and dedicated this performance to her daughter, who was in the hospital, and to all the Madonnas. Photo: Anton Khlabov
Head over Heels, 2015. A woman throws herself from a sand dune as Jerzy Petersburski’s song To Ostatnia Niedziela (Wearied Sun in Russian), known as “tango for suicides,” plays
