Reclaiming Identity:
Life Histories of Elderly Women in Rural Romania

Through my Chappell Lougee Grant, I set out to create an archive of oral histories of women from rural Romania. I hoped to understand the lived experience of these communities and to create a system for preserving their stories as a part of Romanian history before we would no longer be able to talk to them.

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The project took me all throughout the country, from dying southern villages to well-preserved, isolated villages in the Apuseni mountains in North-Western Romania, and allowed me to document and research the experiences of ten women, all over the age of 60. They spoke to me about about female political representation during the communist era, about the intersection between mental health and rural life, about domestic and sexual violence, about their family's journeys for finding food during the famine after the Second World War, and much more. 

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Post-archiving these oral histories, I will continue the project through various exhibitions and installations across the world, to showcase the portraits, videos, and stories collected from the project.