The Art of Women’s Struggles Is the Art of Building Community and Making Alternative History
This dossier explores how women and feminists in the Philippines use creative practices against the systems of power they are fighting against, particularly since the beginning of the pandemic. Primarily feminist activists, the women who have contributed to this online dossier come from various arenas of cultural work—visual art, writing and publishing, music, journalism. Their writing here focuses on the marginalized women they work with, who have been continuously resisting and working against long-standing structures of violence that have only been exacerbated by the state’s actions during the pandemic.
In a sea of colorful placards, the blanket-stitched banners of Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women seem comforting. It personally reminds me of what Alexandra Kollontai calls “our grandmother’s time”–what family looked like before capitalism: “The woman did everything that … Continue reading “Defend Peasant Women: Stitching to Resist”
With the violence of the patriarchy becoming more prominent and exacerbating worsening socioeconomic conditions around COVID-19, circumventions and confrontations have been necessary as strategies for survival. Art, with its tradition of disestablishing flawed systems and infrastructure as well as exposing … Continue reading “Music as Counterviolence in the Time of Duterte and COVID-19”
Before community lockdowns were enforced in the Philippines in March 2020, Gantala Press, a feminist small press and literary collective, had plans to participate in an exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Library that was to publicly launch … Continue reading “Sewing Dissent: Making Cloth Books During COVID-19”
The urban poor women’s gardens at Pandi and San Roque and the three-decade land struggle of the farmers at Lupang Ramos transcend “arts and crafts.” Their organized resistance, in the form of gardening, belongs to a long-running struggle that defies … Continue reading “Urban and Rural Women at the Forefront of Reclaiming Their Land”
Women account for 39 percent of employment worldwide but constitute 54 percent of job losses during the pandemic (as McKinsey and Company reports). In the US, this phenomenon has been termed she-cession. The same thing is arguably happening in the … Continue reading “The Pandemic and the (Non)Working Filipina”
The day before Mother’s Day, the Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women launched the #DefendPeasantWomen campaign, responding to intensifying state-inflicted violence against peasant women in the Philippines. The campaign highlights rampant human rights violations suffered by peasant women community organizers … Continue reading “On Stitching Land and Peasant Women: An Interview with Yllang Montenegro”
