Editorial Assistance
Woman to Go
Mathilde ter Heijne
2011–15
I researched and edited biographies and images for three hundred postcards in Mathilde ter Heijne’s Woman to Go.
This interactive artwork is an ongoing project and archive. Each postcard shows the portrait of an unknown woman who lived between 1839 (the beginning of photography with daguerreotypes) and the 1920s. The “message” side of the card conveys the biography of a person who was born as a woman and was influential or extraordinary in her time.
The pictures and biographies are collected from all over the world. The biographies detail the lives of people who fought for their individual goals in a world dominated by patriarchal social structures—a world in which women had no right to choose or own property, and in which being remembered was an exclusively white, male privilege. Most of these women have been forgotten, and the many unknown women help the known ones become visible again. The postcards can be taken free of charge, so the public can compile alternative historiographies through the biographies.