MIGRATION-GERMANY:
Women in a New Country
Draw Together
By Maricel Drazer
BERLIN, (IPS) -
"You try to adapt, but
you become like a mute
person," said Teresa,
who was born in Colombia
and has lived in Germany
for over 20 years,
describing what it feels
like to be an immigrant.
"Drawing gives you the
freedom to say what you
feel, what you have
bottled up for such a
long time…," she said in
an interview with IPS.
Teresa is a participant
in workshops organized
by the Migrantas group,
where women draw what
emigration has meant to
them, and share their
experiences with each
other.
The difficulty of
speaking in another
language, the
impossibility of
expressing exact shades
of meaning, the
embarrassment that often
results, and the accent
that marks them out as
foreigners are only a
few of the topics
discussed in the groups.
The workshops are the
basis of the work of
Migrantas, a group
formed in the German
capital by Argentine
women immigrants, which
"aims to offer a means
of making visible in the
urban space the feelings
and reflections of those
who are now living in a
new country."
The material produced by
the women in the drawing
workshops are designed
into pictograms --
clear, simple line
drawings with a strong
symbolic content --
which are put out on the
street as publicity
posters on walls and
hoardings and in public
transport, handed out as
free postcards, or
otherwise made visible.
"We think it is
extremely important that
the reflections of
immigrant women should
be liberated from inside
the four walls of their
houses, or from within
the immigrant
associations, where they
often remain," Estela
Schindel, a sociologist
born in Buenos Aires,
who lives in Berlin and
is a co-founder of
Migrantas, told IPS.
The project thus serves
a double purpose: "On
the one hand, it helps
migrant women to assert
themselves, and on the
other, it reaches out to
the whole population,
confronting pedestrians
in public spaces so that
they have the
opportunity of
encountering the
emotions and opinions of
migrant women," she
said.
A woman with her head
bowed looks at a
suitcase, with the
question "Why and what
for?" A pregnant woman
asks about her child,
"Where will she belong
to?" Another pictogram
shows the new language
as a steep mountain with
a woman struggling on
the lowest slopes, and
in another all the
woman’s love and
emotional life is bound
up in a telephone. The
short captions on some
of the pictograms serve
to reinforce the
message.
"As an artist, I propose
a viewpoint in which the
pictogram ceases to be
part of an established
signalling system (like
in airports and train
stations), and starts
telling a story," Marula
Di Como, another
co-founder of Migrantas,
told IPS.
She and graphic designer
Florencia Young, also a
co-founder, design the
pictograms that
interpret the women’s
drawings from the
workshops.
"The pictograms are very
economical images which
can convey deep
emotions," said Schindel,
who added that they
offer a means of
positive identification
for immigrants as a
whole.
Marjan, a young woman
who was born in Iran and
has lived in Berlin from
an early age, received a
postcard with a
pictogram showing a
woman wearing a
classical Muslim
headscarf and the
caption "Not a
terrorist."
Interviewed by IPS, she
said "it’s amazing how a
few strokes of a pen can
overcome prejudice,"
referring to the
discrimination women
wearing headscarves
often experience in
Germany.
The Turkish community is
the largest group of
foreigners in Germany:
nearly two million
people, equivalent to 25
percent of the total
number of foreign
residents, according to
the latest official
figures.
At Migrantas,
participants and
organizers can identify
with one another because
of their shared
experiences as women and
as immigrants in
Germany. The founders,
Di Como, Young and
Schindel, came to this
country from Argentina.
"They also emigrated,
and they have the same
feelings. They’re not
German women coming to
analyse us or experiment
on us," said Ivone, born
in Monterrey, Mexico,
who has lived for the
past five years in the
northern city of
Hamburg, and
participates in the
Migrantas workshops.
"You begin to realise
that your feelings are
very similar to those of
the woman beside you or
the one sitting across
from you, who know that
it’s not easy to leave
everything behind and
start over in a new
country," she told IPS.
The empathy between the
women is one of the main
features of the project.
"Talking collectively
helps to overcome the
perception that people
have unique, isolated
experiences of
migration," the
organizers say.
Out of the German
population of over 82
million, nearly nine
percent are foreigners,
that is, about seven
million people. Another
10 percent, or some
eight million people,
have German citizenship
but were born to
immigrant families.
Migrantas, which is
celebrating its third
anniversary, has held
workshops in Berlin and
Hamburg that have been
attended by nearly 400
women from 35 different
countries. The
association, which
receives funding from
public and private
sources and from
charitable foundations,
now plans to take its
activities to other
major cities in the
country. |
