Thus you shall be!
Natasza Rogozinska is a trained fashion designer, but she rather focuses on illustration and graphic design. Her works have been showcased in Vogue Poland, i-D Magazine, Kaltblut Magazine, Waste Not exhibition at the IFS Somerset House, London, and others. Natasza is now working on a master project, where she is reviving stories about forgotten women from general history, myths, and legends. She combines traditional and analog techniques such as embroidery and linocut with digital art – to create a feminine chronicle of these forgotten stories. We are prod to present her text and her work.
If you would like to read more of her stories and watch more of her work, you can find them (external link) here.
Marguerite de Bressieux took the field in order to avenge a wrong which she herself had suffered. Her father’s castle had been taken by storm by Louis de Chalons, Prince of Orange; and she herself as well as other maidens, had endured the last insult at the hands of brutal soldiery. That is how it came about that, when the royal troops, under Raoul de Gaucourt, Governor of Dauphine, were marching agains Louis de Chalons, twelve strange and mysterious cavaliers, attired in black, wearing scarfs of crape and carrying a banner which bore the device of an orange transfixed by a lance and the motto „Ainsi tu seras” („Thus you shall be”), greeted the general. Insisting, they were enrolled in the French King’s army. At the battle of Autun they got their chance, and proved their worth. They uncovered their faces to charge; and those who had wronged them recognised them, and took them, in their superstition, for the troubled spirits of the dead, returning to earth for their discomfiture. (Francis Henry Gribble „Women in war”)
Did you know the character? I didn’t either. I found out about Marguerite by utter accident – and it soon turned out that her story is not that rare. My list of Women Who Are Thoroughly Forgotten has 37 names for now – Chinese pirates, Mongolian wrestling princesses, Japanese warriors, and Anglo-Saxon ladies. Women of all historical eras, social classes, and castes, from around the world. What do they have in common? Well, oblivion.
Oblivion, which makes us able to retrieve only the residual information about these characters, leaves us with blank spots, unexplained situations, mysterious circumstances, and unexplored occurrences. This lack of knowledge let my imagination run wild, interpreting the mentioned characters as I see fit – giving them new attributes and characteristics, I shed the proper light on them.
In my dream visions, women are resting beneath the monument of Timocleia – attacked and humiliated by the commander of the Thracian army, for whom it was still insufficient – he urged her to hand over the treasures. „Oh I have them,” she said while she led him to the well, and as soon as he greedily look inside, she pushed him in, throwing stones into the black abyss of the well.
Look over there, is that a hand of lady Godiva holding a chess horse? It may be that her husband, Earl Leofric, agreed to lower the taxes – but only if his dear wife would ride a horse through the city of Coventry – naked.
Reviving these characters, I’m creating the very modern annals of the long bygone times – where imagination and history intersect and where art, femininity, and strength exist.
©by Natasza Rogozinska
