As part of my ongoing Gendered Space project, I recently created a small Instagram page:
@gendered_space_project
The idea behind it was simple, I wanted a space to share fragments of the work, especially the posters and the short phrases that emerged from interviews, observations, and everyday moments. But in practice, putting this work online felt more complex than expected.
The posters deal with how people, especially those perceived as female, navigate public space and how they make themselves visible or invisible. And posting them on social media felt like a continuation of that question: how much space do I allow myself to take up online?
Even though this is part of the research, I found myself hesitating. I overthought what to post, how to phrase things, whether something might be “too much” or “too direct.” There was a sense of vulnerability, a little bit the kind you feel when you say something out loud that you’ve always just quietly thought. And that hesitation is exactly what the project is about.
This tension between wanting to say something and being afraid of saying too much again shows so much of gendered behavior. We learn to be polite, subtle and to make room for others. And those rules don’t stop when you open Instagram.
So the Instagram page is part of the research and exploring itself. On it, I’m sharing picgures/ photos of the posters and short phrases like: “Machst du dich kleiner als du bist?” “Das schickt sich nicht.” “Nimm es doch als Kompliment.”
These are not simply slogans, they’re real sentences I’ve heard or collected during my conversations. They capture the ways in which people are told to behave. I pulled these sentences out of context and place them into public space physically and digitally and I’m actually curious to see what happens. Will people recognize themselves? Will they respond or ignore?
The posters will be installed soon in semi-public places, each one with a QR code leading to the Instagram page.This will help me collect actual real life feedback from real life. I’m not expecting viral reactions, as it is not a big project of course but I’m looking for small, meaningful responses. Or even silence which is a response too.
Creating this account turned out to be another small act of “taking space.” Not loud but honest and part of the process.
