FROM GYM TO GUILDS - On sister-friend tactics, weak resistance, young girls and body politics in contemporary art

Abstract

This essay explores the concept of "sister-friend tactics" as a form of weak resistance within the context of body politics and contemporary art. Drawing from personal experiences, feminist theory, and selected artistic practices, Kinga Molińska investigates how everyday acts of relational solidarity - such as going to the gym together, sharing family secrets, and borrowing clothes - can serve as subtle yet transformative forms of resistance against hegemonic structures, including patriarchy, neoliberalism, institutional conservatism, and biopolitical control over the female body. Grounded in the Polish sociopolitical landscape and informed by theorists such as Ewa Majewska, Sara Ahmed, and Elisabeth Grosz, the essay introduces weak resistance as an alternative to heroic, confrontational modes of dissent. Through case studies of artists Mari Keski-Korsu, Julia Woronowicz, and Olga Micińska, Molińska illustrates how artistic practices can materialise care, relationality, and feminist solidarity. The essay proposes that by foregrounding embodied, affective, and material processes, sister-friend tactics offer new political imaginaries and modes of agency rooted in collective, everyday experience.