The text was published in 2019 in the 2nd issue of CUTRA magazine. For the text in Romanian click here & for the video-essay about the League of Gorj Women here.
From Simeria to Targu Jiu we travelled with the lights off. The light from the locomotive's headlamp was bumping into tunnels and trees. I wrote down a new word: anastomosis – the natural, surgical connection between two or more blood vessels, or the filaments of a plant.
I arrived in the middle of the night. I went to see Brancusi's Column and slept overnight at the Hotel Gorj, room 405.
On 16 April 2017 I arrived in Targu Jiu for the first time. The visit was a double event, The Infinity Column had just been ‘vandalized’. A twelve-year-old girl finely carved her vow of friendship and love: ‘S + S = BFF’ (Best Friends Forever), on the most important contribution to modern sculpture in Romania.
‘The minor quickly approached The Infinity Column. She used a sharp object to scratch the first module,’ said Alexandra Petrita, spokeswoman for the Targu Jiu Local Police. After the event, surveillance cameras were installed, guards were deployed and the ban on touching Brancusi's works came along with other protective measures.
On the sign at the park's entrance, I learn that the Hero’s Path Monumental Ensemble was commissioned and donated to the city in 1938 by the National League of Gorj Women, chaired by Arethia Tatarescu, wife of Gheorghe Tatarescu, prime minister at the time.
‘LEAGUE, leagues, noun. A union, association, or coalition of states, cities, societies, natural persons, or legal entities, established for the achievement of a common goal. – From fr. ligue, it. liga.’
In 1921, immediately after World War I, ‘an organisation with a feminist spirit was founded in Targu Jiu, with solid social, cultural, and artistic projects, known as the National League of Romanian Women from Gorj. (...) The great lady of interwar Gorj, Arethia Tatarescu, who managed to break the educational canons of the time that placed women in men's shadow, got involved in public life, with a strong voice in the world of arts and social life in general.’ – Prof. Gabriela Popescu, president of the Arethia Tatarescu League of Gorj Women, Gorjeanul newspaper, 11 May 2018.
Immediately after 1944, the activity of the League of Gorj Women ceased.
I learn that almost fifty years later, in 1992, a new apolitical and non-profit organisation was set up: the Arethia Tatarescu League of Gorj Women, made up of twenty-one women.
The League coordinated the activity of women in Gorj, focusing on equal opportunities in the work, family, and social environment, without ethnic, racial and religious discrimination.
By 1996, the number of those enrolled in the League had risen to over one hundred.
30 July 2018,
Craiova
More than a year after my first visit to Targu Jiu, I found the League's phone number. On the other end of the line was Gabriela Popescu, who, practically with far fewer resources, took up the initiative Arethia had conceived in 1992. In a calm voice, she tells me she is making herself a tomato juice, but she can make time to meet me.
I took the train from Craiova. I stayed at the Hotel Gorj. Room 407. We met in front of the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre and went together to Arethia Tatarescu Park.
On my way, the first thing that came to mind was to ask her what she thought of Arethia's bust, recently removed from its pedestal. The decision was made by Radu Boroianu, President of the International Commission for the Analysis of Brancusi's Works and Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture between 2013 and 2014.
The reason given was that her breasts were too large and ‘did not resemble the real image of the person’. As a result of this long-running conflict, the bust was moved ‘away from tourists’ eyes’, fifty kilometres away, to the locality of Vladimir, in the courtyard of the Tudor Vladimirescu Memorial House.
Gabriela felt there was something fishy about this gesture and decided to stay out of it. ‘I don't even want to think about it.’
We got to the park and sat down on a bench. I sit with my body twisted towards Gabriela. In the background, the empty pedestal where Arethia's bust once stood. Somewhere on the far left, a cameraman and a reporter. On the right, a blonde-haired lady tosses a rabbit from her arms into the grass.
Gabriela worked for twenty-nine years at the library of the Syndicates' House of Culture in Targu Jiu, she was a translator for the ‘French specialists’ at the Poenari thermal power station, a Romanian-French shorthand typist, and a museographer of old books at the Museum of History, where she translated from Cyrillic, Slavic and Romanian Church Slavonic.
She says the League was founded out of necessity and conceived as a ‘women's organisation for all women’. ‘A Post-Secondary Nursing School was opened at the House of Culture, as a subsidiary to the one in Bucharest, Carol Davila. The subsidiary had to be organised under the authority of a women’s organisation. Because I was there and because I was a woman, I was given the privilege of thinking about it and giving it a name. The most correct thing to do was to call it the Arethia Tatarescu League of Gorj Women.’
Due to the lack of a venue, League meetings took place in the library of the House of Culture, in living rooms, in parks or in museum halls. Nowadays, there are few that are still active in the League. They still meet for coffee from time to time.
With a certain weight in her voice, she confesses to me that they never managed to attract European funds to do more projects, and that they were living ‘on handouts’. ‘We used to do charity work, but we can't do what Arethia did. Instead, politicians tried to attract them with various position offers and other privileges. But we were interested in doing something without politics – we must think logically and remember that Arethia was the wife of a prime minister, and yet she didn't lift one finger for politics.
‘Years ago, I joined a project of the National Organisation for Migration. I was still at the House of Culture, and we managed to get some girls back on their feet who had been victims of human trafficking. We made a hair salon for one of the girls. We counselled them, we had a psychologist… When I worked in the library, I was alone, I could call them to talk to them, listen to them…’
She tells me that in order to carry out different actions and manifestations outside Targu Jiu, they needed money, which they did not have. ‘There were twenty or so of us, depending on how many we got together, we needed a big minibus. The husband of a childhood friend of mine had a tour company that we always turned to.’
It had started drizzling in big drops, but she kept talking – as if the rain was avoiding our words – about how tired she was and how she lacked the energy to carry on with the League, how she wanted to ‘become something else’. ‘I continued even after I retired, but I told them I didn't want to be president any more, that they should choose someone younger.’
The egg with three yolks.
We agreed to meet the next day in the same park. We were waiting, unaware of each other, on different benches. She came with a yellow bag, from which she took out, one by one, a yellow-covered book, Marea Doamnă a Gorjului Interbelic, Arethia Tătărescu, which she gave me as a present, and a yellow folder with an archive of articles about the League's activities, carefully cut out over the years from the local newspaper Gorjeanul.
Titles of articles. A selection.
„A luat ființă Clubul Femeilor Puternice”
„Organizația Internațională a Migrației București și traficul de femei”
„Liga Femeilor Gorjene nu e o… fantomă”
„O viață mai ușoară pentru femei”
„Al doilea congres al ligii femeilor gorjene Aretia Tătărescu”
„Liga femeilor gorjene a deschis un curs (gratuit) de informatică”
„La casa de cultură a sindicatelor, s-a deschis o nouă formă de școlarizare”
„Femeile gorjene adună rândurile”
Few things remain written about Arethia's League, documents attesting to their activities no longer exist because they were burned under the communist regime. Instead, Gabriela kept in touch with her daughter, Sanda Tatarescu, whom she met when Sanda decided to use her mother's name for the League.
‘She was extremely attached to me and trusted me greatly. She was a distinguished woman who had lived in Paris, London… She had been on diplomatic missions with her father. She was imprisoned for doing politics. The only one who was not imprisoned was Arethia.’
After an hour of talking, she took me to the city centre, along the Walk of Fame. We said goodbye at Arethia Tatarescu's star.
I head for the Hotel Gorj. Room 407. I stop in front of the window. It's the time when the crows come out of their nest and fly noisily over Brancusi Park.
Over my blank stare, Gabriela's question before we say goodbye echoes in my head: ‘Now tell me, what do you really want to do?’
7 January 2019,
Berlin
It's been almost six months since I last saw Gabriela. I send her a letter with the text I wrote after our meeting. I wait for her to write back, but she never does.
‘I'm Nicoleta Moise and, if you remember, we met in July last year in Targu Jiu to talk about the League of Gorj Women. When we said goodbye, I promised to write back to you when I decide what to do with the project I was working on at the time during my artistic residency in Craiova.
After our two meetings, I have written a text, not very long, and I would be delighted if you could read it too.
I'm sorry I put off contacting you. I travelled quite a bit last year and couldn't get it together to get back to you with a message.
I intend to return to Targu Jiu this summer, so maybe we can meet if you have the time. It was a great pleasure meeting you, and I want to tell you that I have been thinking all this time about what you told me about the League of Gorj Women.
I wish you a happy new year and I hope to see you again.
Thank you.
Kindly,
Nicoleta’
16 May 2019,
Bucharest
Yesterday I worked up the courage and called Gabriela, twice. She didn't answer. Thinking that maybe she hadn't saved my number in her phone, I sent her a text telling her who I was and that I'd like to see her next month.
She didn't answer.
In my mind, scenarios were overlapping: 1. she doesn't want to hear anything from me because I stopped reaching out to her last year, 2. she read the letter I sent in January and she didn't like something I wrote, 3. maybe she changed her phone number, 4. she didn't get my calls because of a connection problem.
I'm thinking of giving it another try.
17 May 2019,
Bucharest
Today Gabriela called me back. Among other things, she told me that she was retiring from the League but would remain an honorary member. She agreed to see me. She told me to let her know a week in advance what day I wanted to meet, and an hour before I arrived in town.
Arethia, Catălina, Milita, Gabriela
I arrived on 11 June and called her an hour before I arrived in town, at 18:00. I stayed at the same Hotel Gorj, room 405. We met in front of the Elvira Godeanu Dramatic Theatre. We visited the Constantin Brancusi Park.
We look around and I try to resume the discussion about the ban on touching the three monuments. She tells me that when she was a kid, she used to sit on the chairs in the alley that connects The Table of Silence and The Gate of the Kiss.
‘Before, the Jiu River was pitch-black, there they used to wash the coal from Petrosani.’
We went to the Revolution Square and stopped at Ecaterina Teodoroiu's mausoleum, built in 1936 by Milita Petrascu, with the help of the League of Gorj Women. We went to the Park of the Infinity Column and stopped in front of the panel where I read for the first time about the existence of the League of Gorj Women. Then we sat on a bench and talked some more, after which we said goodbye.
We met again the next day, this time we drove outside the city, to Curtisoara, to see the house relocated from Poiana, where the Tatarescu family lived, and the house where Brancusi lived when he came to Targu Jiu for the construction of the ensemble. On our way back to the city, I asked her, and she told me more about the project with the National Organisation for Migration.
In 2001, the Organisation contacted the League of Gorj Women about a case of an eighteen-year-old girl from Targu Jiu, who was a victim of human trafficking in Italy. With the support of the Organisation, the League built Cristina* a hair salon where she could work and become independent.
‘Her mother was a hairdresser, her brother was a hairdresser, and we managed to build her a hair salon. We wanted to build the hair salon in her backyard. Initially her family didn't agree, it was hard. And shortly after they finished building the hair salon she was taken back to Italy by a man, we fought with him too. She got pregnant. We had to take care of her as our own child.’
International Organization for Migration Bucharest and trafficking in women
'More than two hundred girls and young women, victims of trafficking from the Balkans, have so far returned to Romania with the support of IOM, through IOM programmes to assist victims of trafficking in children and women and to prevent trafficking in persons in South-Eastern Europe; 25% of the two hundred victims are minors'. (23 March 2001)
This summer I also saw the hair salon. Cristina and Gabriela hadn't seen each other for a few years, even though they live in the same city. When we arrived, Cristina was cutting a client's hair, so we sat in the courtyard on some plastic chairs, as if we too were waiting our turn to have our hair cut. She came out smiling in her white robe. She served us juice and water. She looked like the girl in the picture Gabriela had shown me a year ago, when she was only eighteen. They began talking and I watched in awe at the powerful bond the two women had built on the framework of this story, and the magnitude of the League's gesture that practically saved Cristina's life.
Arethia was interested in art and the preservation of traditional values, and she was a visionary when she set out to erect the Hero’s Path Monumental Ensemble (1937-1938). What was to be a mere monument became a work of art in the public space.
The League led by Gabriela provided social support and helped, with modest resources, children, elderly people, and women in vulnerable situations. As for Cristina's hair salon, what was to be just a workplace has turned into a symbolic monument of solidarity between women.
*Cristina is the name used to protect her identity.
The documentation of this story was guided by curiosity and my own initiative. In 2018, as part of the ElectroPutere Craiova AIR I wrote a short version of the text. In 2019, at the invitation of AAIR Antwerp, I put together all the material gathered over time and came out with this video essay that was ready in early 2020.
Special thanks goes to Alexandra Naum, Baptiste Audousset, Bianca Basan, Charlotte Van Buylaere, Ali Venir & Lavinia Ionescu (CUTRA), Eva Bialek, Gabriela Popescu, Krzysztof Gutfrański, Magda Radu, Sorana Georgescu-Gorjan, Vlad Ursulean
The text was translated from Romanian by Claudia Craiu Craciun