‘Fadrines’ is an exhibition about women who did not marry when it was the right thing to do. Or, in other words, women who undermined the heteropatriarchal norm of getting married and having children. What were their lives like, taking into account the social environment that looked at them sideways, that stereotyped them, that ignored them? How did they construct themselves from that margin that was bachelorhood, from that periphery that attracted little attention? Far from scornful or pitiful readings, ‘Fadrines’ shows the diversity of the life trajectories of single women in the face of the monolith of the hegemonic model. Intuitive feminists of the 40s and 50s, the identity journey from stereotype to plenitude is the essence of this exhibition.
‘Fadrines’ explores resistances. Resistance to a norm: getting married and having children; resistance to stereotypes, applied to silence those women who have acted on the margins, outside the line, outside the established framework. ‘Fadrines’ shows trajectories of singleness, variations in other ways of being and living, far from the dominant patterns.
The plurality of forms that a life can take, despite the narrow parameters of the social imaginary, come together in this exhibition. ‘Fadrines’ is in praise of those intuitive feminists who said no to a marriage based on legitimised inequality. But it is also a recognition of those for whom singlehood was not an option, but an imposition against their wishes.
‘Fadrines’ is a challenge to the forms of female non-existence. We invite you on a journey through which we have accompanied the women interviewed, from stereotype to plenitude.
