¿Qué pasaría si las mujeres fuéramos monumentos?

What would happen if women were monuments?

Ensayo | Essay

If we were women of public art?

Laura Uimonen

I will discover the question with an example from my everyday neighborhood from the Hämeenpuisto esplanade park at City of Tampere in central Finland. A young woman is described standing, hair open and wearing a long skirt. Today, at the very special spring, she is wearing a mask on her face. On the pedal we can read her name, nothing else – who was she and what if we would be like her?

At first, not even thinking why, if we were Minna Canth we would be celebrated more than 50 years after our death in the city we were born, but not really lived in. This baby girl was born here in my hometown as Ulrika Wilhelmina Johnson at Puutarhakatu 8 at Tampere to a working-class family in 1844. 

Fourteen years before a Scottish James Finlayson had arrived to small town of Tampere and started the cotton factory Finlayson, which was an entire society inside the town. Minna had an opportunity to get into school as a part of factory-working society. This background of industrialization lies behind the rather long development where girls got  finally a possibility to have an education and to study, to work and to live a independently thinking persons in the society. This development to improve rights of female sex is intertwined in Finland to the born of independence of the small nationality of Finnish people. She is celebrated as part of the development where her work and choices represent radical activism. Her statue stands for the unusual era of a female novelist, playwriter and first female journalist using Finnish language. She has got several statues and streets named after her, several studies and analyses have been published about her life, career and artworks. She is the only female in Finland celebrated with her own flag day 19^th March. The blue-white Finnish flag represents the special self-conscience of young independent nation with the long history under first Swedish King and later as autonomic part of Russian empire. The role of independent women in the society with right to vote, study and work in any profession have been important part of the development of democracy in Finland.

Generally Minna Canth seems to be rather an institution of cultural activism than a woman of flesh casted in the bronze. Maybe because the Finnish language was neglected by the ruling government, it became even more important and cherished treasure for the fight of own culture and in Minna’s life a powerful tool for critical realism.

So, back to the original thought of role play as a public art: if we were Minna, we would be known after the words we put on the paper with strong critical views in our mind and for the unusual courage in our time. In her shoes we would now ask what is wrong now and where we can tell it loud? She put her words in to work in novels, in plays, some of them written with secret name. The titles of work tell a lot: The wife of a working man 1878, Poor people 1886, Kids of hard luck 1888 and Anna-Lisa 1895 dealing a murder of a newborn child. Behind the statue is carved an act of the novel Anna-Lisa begging for mercy.

Trying to adjust myself into her position and aims I browse and find an audio chapter of her book Poor people. I listen, look to inner courtyard at the same city she lived in. Her words start to draw images in my mind of a mother and her child’s. While listening the words outspoken she becomes alive again. She would speak for the old people in their homes alone right now, pale faces in the window, she would write about people feeling poor in their lives with problem of the too many things and troublesome Kon Mari-principle. She would worry fragile minds of this time, of homeless and paperless people in the shadows of the city.

So, if we were standing here in the park as a statue, we might be remembered for the not for success but the compassion for the people, in Minna’s case for women and children. She visited prisons and among most poor people with empathy and curiosity of the real life in all colors and shades.

Statue is from year 1951 by sculptor Lauri Leppänen after a competition by Tampere foundation and several woman societies. Funding for the statue was started by a female factory owner 1950s.

Thinking of the bold life of Minna I must envy her courage. At the same time, I find myself crawling into a shoe as a creature in the micro-scale statue at the other park nearby where small little statues surprises people walking in the park. Tiny sculptures have interesting role in the city playing with the scale and tradition of monument as opponent for the classical monument. Minna’s monumental gaze in the park makes me rethink monuments, a monument for a brave girl, a brave mother and wife, a brave colleague, a brave human for another.

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Próxima interrogativa | Next interrogative

Conoces algún cantautor(a) que describa ciudades en sus canciones como si fuera un etnógrafo urbano?

Format: Comparte el enlace del video | Fecha límite: 19 septiembre 2020

Do you know any song-artists that describe cities in their songs as though they were urban ethnographers?

Format: Share video Link | Submission deadline: 19 September 2020