Dr Deborah Jermyn, Associate Professor in Film & Culture in the School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Roehampton, will feature in the MAUSI Net exhibition, an AHRC-funded international project exploring menopause experiences across diverse communities through artivism.
Over the past 18 months, Dr Jermyn has collaborated with Professor Elena Vacchelli at the University of Greenwich and project partners at the Universities of Delhi and Malmö to develop creative outputs that reflect a breadth of women’s experiences of menopause.
The exhibition, launching this Thursday at the Project Space gallery in Greenwich, presents a range of works including comics, drawings, and body-maps. These pieces explore both the challenges and empowering aspects of menopause, highlighting the perspectives of women from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds.
Dr Jermyn said: "We are hugely grateful to the AHRC for enabling this opportunity to explore and reimagine menopause in more inclusive ways, working with women from marginalised communities in different socio-cultural contexts.
"Despite their different locations, both workshops in Malmö and Delhi revealed a perturbing unawareness of menopause symptoms, silence and invisibility around menopause in everyday language, and coexisting feelings of loss and hope – but also, crucially, finding freedom and solidarity with peers experiencing the menopause transition."
Featured works include comics by Malmö-based cartoonist Karolina Bång, a collaborative word cloud from the Malmö workshop, and the iconic "Freedom!" drawing produced by a workshop participant. These pieces collectively convey the personal and shared narratives of women navigating the menopause transition.
Following the main exhibition, selected works will be displayed at Roehampton Library, providing further engagement with the University community. More information about the project and its international workshops is available at www.mausinet.com.
