The installation Comfort Station goes back to the 1930s and 1940s, when countless women were forced to become sexual slaves for the Japanese army. This half forgotten event is brought back by the artist as a reminder of all the atrocities women have suffered throughout history. Inhabiting a peaceful European country one tends to look at such distant events with not little astonishment, but the artist wants us to recall how only a few decades ago similar events were taking place in Europe itself, e.g. in Bosnia. It is even happening right now somewhere in the world.
Yet, the “comfort women” are remembered here also for other notions beyond sexual violence, given that these women were also forced to clean, cook and serve the same soldiers that used them as sexual objects. Female subjugation and debasing, physical or psychological, is quite a common feature of human history and it transcends cultures and places. Traditionally in most societies the woman is seen as fulfilling a role which restricts her to the house and the family. She tends to be an object-like being, something to be owned, a man’s propriety. She has no free will beyond those exteriorly imposed social limits. In the installation the artist is also reflecting on that because these women were seen as fulfilling their war time ‘obligations’. In the mind of those men and of the institutions ruling that society the difference between peace and war time female roles didn’t seem so wide; just like the quite common war time notion of women as trophies is not that removed from the peace time view of women in many cultures.
The artist wants to highlight how such views of the female role as second rate beings are devastating for women but also absolutely destructive for society’s moral and spiritual core. The whole social and cultural edifice is then impregnated with a kind of ‘sickness’ that becomes pervasive throughout society. Not only women but also men become mutated monstrous beings as the institutions around them seem to grow while they become more and more submerged within their walls. This moral and ethical ‘sickness’ makes possible the enacting of the most barbarous and vicious horrors, since the individuals lose any respect and empathy towards others as well as towards themselves.
Eduardo Marques da Costa
From The Bells Brake Down Their Tower 2016 Exhibition
Yet, the “comfort women” are remembered here also for other notions beyond sexual violence, given that these women were also forced to clean, cook and serve the same soldiers that used them as sexual objects. Female subjugation and debasing, physical or psychological, is quite a common feature of human history and it transcends cultures and places. Traditionally in most societies the woman is seen as fulfilling a role which restricts her to the house and the family. She tends to be an object-like being, something to be owned, a man’s propriety. She has no free will beyond those exteriorly imposed social limits. In the installation the artist is also reflecting on that because these women were seen as fulfilling their war time ‘obligations’. In the mind of those men and of the institutions ruling that society the difference between peace and war time female roles didn’t seem so wide; just like the quite common war time notion of women as trophies is not that removed from the peace time view of women in many cultures.
The artist wants to highlight how such views of the female role as second rate beings are devastating for women but also absolutely destructive for society’s moral and spiritual core. The whole social and cultural edifice is then impregnated with a kind of ‘sickness’ that becomes pervasive throughout society. Not only women but also men become mutated monstrous beings as the institutions around them seem to grow while they become more and more submerged within their walls. This moral and ethical ‘sickness’ makes possible the enacting of the most barbarous and vicious horrors, since the individuals lose any respect and empathy towards others as well as towards themselves.
Eduardo Marques da Costa
From The Bells Brake Down Their Tower 2016 Exhibition
