Dr. Olga Engelhardt
has professional training as a publisher as well
as experience working as a couturier in Frankfurt-on-Main
before receiving her Abitur (American Bachelors'
Degree).
In the 1980s, she
studied ethnology and Arabic, obtaining her doctorate
with a dissertation about the creation of Algerian
women's wedding costumes (mainly gold embroidery
work) in Algeria's large informal economy, and Algerian
women's culture more generally. Since 1994 she has
worked arranging expositions for several museums,
among them the exposition "Hochzeit im Maghreb"
(Marriage in Maghreb) at the Ethnological Museum
of Berlin.
In addition, she
has held a teaching position at the Ethnological
Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin where
she and her students arranged multi-media installations
about their field research, resulting in the films
"Herstellung einer Hochzeitsdecke" (The
Weaving of a Wedding Rug) and "Gerben in Marrakesch"
(Leather Tanning in Marrakesh). She and her students
also organized the "Henna tattoos" project,
making skin-quality henna and Tunisian henna stencils
available for the larger European public, while
providing income for the Tunisian women who make
them.
What was at first
intended as an educational project for the exposition
"Hochzeit im Maghreb" (Marriage in Mahgreb)
at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, in which non-artists could celebrate a Tunisian "Henna Ceremony"
at home, soon developed into a project similar to
those which provide "fairly traded" coffee
and tea.
Dr. Engelhardt,
along with one of her students, now wishes to expand
this project to make Yemenite henna, stencils, and
other Yemenite beauty products available for henna
artists and others.
Dr. Engelhardt's
website is http://www.henna-und-mehr.de
