Anna Kalwajtys’s performance “Olympia”

After the first wave of the Black Protests and the high-profile feminist celebrations in 2018 marking one hundred years since Polish women won the right to vote, the Gdańsk-based performance artist returns to Olympe de Gouges, inspired by a Polish translation of the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen”. Dressed as the revolutionary woman in Poland’s national colours, the artist performs excerpts from the “Declaration”, revealing a historical sense of desperation. Olympe de Gouges was guillotined for proclaiming ideas that would become foundations of the modern women’s emancipation movement less than a century later. Two centuries on, the text argues, this demand remains unfulfilled in Poland, where women are treated as second-class citizens.

The French Revolution and women’s participation in it were important reference points for the Polish wave of protests for abortion rights. Never before in modern Polish history had so many women taken to the streets with broad intergenerational support from different social groups. Echoes of the question “Why is the revolution a woman?”, from an essay by the distinguished Polish scholar of Romanticism Maria Janion, who analysed the figure of the French Marianne leading the people to the barricades, appeared on spontaneously made flags and banners at the Black Protests.

Anna Kalwajtys’s performance was scheduled for the 10th Women’s Congress in Brussels on 8 February 2025 at 19:45.