Fragments from an eight-hour video installation, 2002-2006, 66'
The position of women in society is the main theme that runs through a large part of Aprilija Lužar’s art. But even in the way she lives, she strives to bring about a change in the way women are treated. Multimedia project, called Women’s Taxi, combines her previous artistic experience in a form she calls taxi- or mobile-art. This women’s artistic transportational therapeutic action is an attempt to establish a communication between art, the public, and women in their common struggle against violence. It involves an anonymous, free-of-charge taxi ride for female passengers around Ljubljana and its surroundings. Riding in a taxi with Aprilija Lužar as taxi-driver is a therapy session in which the taxi plays the role of a mobile public confessional and the taxi-driver is a kind mental health counsellor. The traveller who hires the taxi in order to confess the violence she has experienced in this way collaborates in the art project and, with the help of the artistic process, deconstructs the perception of herself as victim. The central point of the action is, then, to create an awareness in every individual that rape and violence towards women concern not just the woman involved, but should be viewed as a problem of the entire society. ‘With the mobile painting Women’s Taxi action, I am stressing an energetic familiarisation with paintings and painting certain spheres of the familiarisation in my role as a mobile artist / automobile — self (auto) portrait — autos / taxi art, with unlimited resources,’ comments the artist. In addition to the mobile action, the project includes a video and painting installation and a performance. Aprilija Lužar and her Women’s Taxi won V-Day — STOP RAPE international competition, which also provided the means for its realisation. The competition, organised by Eve Ensler, the American activist and author of The Vagina Monologues, is an international initiative encouraging original strategies to stop violence against women. The competition recognised in Taxi an initiative for woman-power, action, and creativity. The project was devised in co-operation with the Ljubljana-based Women’s Counselling Group, as well as the Women War Victims Centre and the Autonomous Women’s House in Zagreb, and Ljubljana’s Studio Zmajček.
