Marta Frej

Marta Frej (born 26 March 1973) is a Polish feminist artist, designer and illustrator. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. She runs the foundation Kulturoholizm based in Częstochowa, which promotes artistic production of the local youth. Frej creates cartooned memes which centre on women's rights, female sexuality and gender stereotypes. The memes are published on the Facebook page Marta Frej Memy and since 2015, on the wave of Frej's growing popularity, they are also shown on exhibitions across Poland. In 2015, together with a top Polish feminist, Agnieszka Graff, Frej published a book Memy i graffy. Dżender, kasa i seks [Memes and graffs. Gender, cash and sex], where the artist discusses the main social issues in Poland with which her artistic memes are engaging. The artist lives in Częstochowa with her son and her partner, Tomek Kosiński, who often feature in the memes.

Feminist Activism

Frej declares herself a feminist and she supports all kinds of feminist activism in Poland mainly by producing posters, designs and memes which are used during women's protests and marches. She also responds to the global activism for women's rights, such as Me Too movement for which she created a meme 'Ja tez' [Me too]. It features four women sitting and sawing and it features the women's dialogue: ‘What are you embroidering? The slogan “#MeToo”. – Me too… – Me too… – Me too…’. In 2016, after the nationwide Black Protest against the total ban on abortion proposed by the Polish government, Frej created a mural in Warsaw featuring the protest. The mural shows women marching with black umbrellas (a symbol of women’s protest in Poland), a rain of the legal paragraph symbols falling onto them with a message: 'I won't give birth to a child if I'm dead' [Pol. Martwa dziecka nie urodze].

The artist creates posters for all kinds of local and national events and book covers, such as the 2015 design of the Polish translation of Michel Houellebecq Submission (Pol. Uległość). Frej has her own website, where she shares the old and new memes, featured articles and interviews. She also exhibits her memes in the galleries across Poland. Apart from her artistic activity, Frej works in the Centre Promoting Young Talents (Centrum Promocji Młodych) in her hometown, Częstochowa. The city, the main pilgrimage destination in Poland is primarily associated with its religiosity, but Frej herself is involved in a number of initiatives and festivals promoting the local art and artists, such as the festival Arteria, which had already 7 editions.

Memes

The main themes that emerge from the memes are everyday sexism, gender stereotypes, education of girls and boys and the lack of appropriate sexual education, violence against women and anti-women policies of the Polish government. One of the memes, which shows a woman with a black eye, dressed in a traditional folk costume from Kraków region was one of the images used in the stormy campaign fighting for the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. In 2015, Frej published a book "Memy i graffy. Dżender, kasa i seks." [Memes and graffs. Gender, cash and sex], co-authored by Agnieszka Graff, features a collection of Frej's artistic memes put in a thematic context.

References

This article "Marta Frej" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Marta Frej. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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