During a three-day-long performance, I executed a "female job" (embroidering) due to my research on memory, trauma and motherhood in the context of Greek immigration to Germany after the Second World War. I created 15 embroideries, as many as the stops of one of the main train routes Greeks took immigrating to Germany, in the dimensions of a standard handkerchief. Each handkerchief contains text or symbols narrating this immigration story.
My point of view derives from the females' position in Greek society, which promotes patriarchal norms and structures, in connection to the common practice of putting children for years under the care of close or distant relatives back in Greece, thus creating the so-called "Kofferkinder" (suitcase children). The outcome is based on interdisciplinary research using literary sources and personal stories. To create a more holistic experience for the audience, I sang songs identifying with nostalgia for Greek immigrants to Germany while embroidering.
Simone de Beauvoir argued that the "religion of maternity" is always linked, historically, socially and economically, to a priority policy around the issue of birth and family, considered a critical source of development for the social fabric. The integration of women in the salary system increased after the First World War. Still, even more during and after the end of the Second World War, marking the beginning of a new era for women against the fate that Hitler defined and summed up for it by the phrase, also known as "the three K": "Küche, Kinder, Kirche" (kitchen, children, church).
The Labor Force Recruitment Pact's signing on 30 March 1960 between Greece and Germany set out the institutional framework for the legal and organized transfer of labour to a country where the so-called "German miracle" was taking place, rebuilding the economy through the rapid development of industry following the Second World War. The immediate need for cheap labour, which resulted from the war on the one hand and the effort to reduce production costs, led to importing foreign "labour" material from mainly South European countries. The workers from these countries who immigrated to Germany for a few years, mainly in the industrial sectors, were unofficially called "Gastarbeiter" (guest workers).
