Marija Mandic Criticises Patriarchy by Reflecting on the Absence of Women’s Names in Her Family Tree

The Serbian artist reacts to the lack of women in her genealogy by combining her family's old images with her own, subtly evocative photographs. Her goal is to transform this absence into a presence, doing justice to her nameless, female ancestors.

In my grandmother’s house, I found a drawing of a family tree and a letter about it compiled by a distant relative. As expected for the patriarchal system, in the centuries-long family line, only the names of our male ancestors were written. Completely unexpectedly, the letter mentions the distant mother of our family, unfortunately of unknown name and surname.

This farthest recorded female ancestor is called the white bee in the Serbian language and tradition. The concept behind it is not very developed, since finding such a long family tree that mentions women is not common at all. It is said that the white bee is called like that because she always appears in the whiteness of the fog of memory and swarms like a bee in our consciousness, trying to wake us up and remind us that she is still here. 

White bee's acknowledgment sheds light on questions related to history, memory, and the treatment of women within the family. For me, she reflects the neglected position of other women in the patriarchal form of ancestral tracking. That's why I decided to evoke my white bee's presence by moving it out from the space between the written lines from which she appeared, placing it in the space of the family history and memory to which she belongs.

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Words and pictures by Marija Mandić

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Marija Mandić is an artist working with photography, who lives and works between Novi Sad (SRB) and Prague. Marija is interested in the past and memory which she explores mostly through the familial context. In 2022 she obtained PhD in Visual Communication at the Faculty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem (CZ). Follow her on Instagram and PhMuseum. 

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PhMuseum curators.