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(Archive) Wifey4Lifey

A wedding protest.

This project was part of DDW 2022
wedding protest — © Eden Calgie

Maja is on the hunt for a husband. Her visa runs out in approximately 700 days from the beginning of DDW in 2022. She wants to have rights as eu-citizens do, because she is tired of the everyday struggle of a non-eu citizen living in the Netherlands. It seems that getting married is the best option

The struggle

I have Serbian citizenship, and Serbia is not part of the European Union. That means that after I graduated from my Bachelor studies in summer/autumn 2021 my student visa stopped and I had to get another visa to be able to stay in the Netherlands. On the 15th of September I applied for the 'Orientation year visa'. As the start of the visa is counted from the date you apply for it, my 365 days started on the 15th of September 2021.
Every day it gets less and less days until my visa runs out, and as the name of the visa suggests this visa is made to give non-eu students an extra year to think and figure out if they want to stay in the Netherlands and then apply for another visa. For example, find work, start another study or get married. Those are the three basic options. Since I started this project I tried to find a husband by running in a wedding dress in 5 cities in the Netherlands asking random men to marry me. As nobody wanted to I am not giving up and I will try to find a husband at DDW 2022. My new visa, the artist visa runs out in approximately 2 years. Which means I have 2 more years to find a husband... even though I don't want to get married.

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wedding protest — © Eden Calgie

wedding protest — © Eden Calgie