Rita ZIMMERMANN (1982), Sofia (Political Woman); 2022

Collage (made by hand); print on archival paper; 100 x 100 cm
Signed, described on the back: Rita Zimmermann Sofia (Political Woman) 2022 ed. 1/5
Edition no: 1/5

The work grows out of the artist's personal recollection of her childhood spent on Smolna Street in Warsaw, across the street from the "Sofia" strip club operating during the communist era, functioning on the border between the official and unofficial history of the city, in a space strongly marked politically and socially.

Years later, the image returns as a figure of the "political woman" simultaneously visible and marginalized, inscribed in systems of power, gaze and exchange. The work juxtaposes the realm of intimate memory with the mechanisms of the political and social order, in which the female body and female presence historically function at the intersection of control, projection and the economy of the gaze.

Collage becomes a tool for deconstructing these relationships by revealing the tension between private experience and the power structures that shape and redefine it.