Above Images: Work In Progress

I have been largely impacted by erotic artworks made by men, featuring distorted, displaced, and dismembered imagery of the female body (particularly the female reproductive system) in my time studying surrealist artwork and the psychoanalytic basis of the art movement. With an understanding of dream interpretation and the main role it plays in these works, it becomes evident how the displacement and distortion of the female body represent the unconscious conflicts and desires these artists themselves hold. These works and forms often represent sexual insecurities, as well as the fear of female sexuality, the female body, and even castration. The distortion of forms resembling the genitals to represent a deeper meaning has inspired me to approach my art more perversely. In my work, “For Her Pleasure”, I am taking this Surrealist approach of erotic artwork to represent sexual insecurity and doing the opposite.

Through pattern drafting, garment construction, and even color matching the dye palette to my own anatomy, I use imagery of the vulva and genital fluids to represent coming into sexual security and pleasure in my own female body. By putting the erotic self on display in such a “crude” way, I am destigmatizing the sexuality of the female body, which is due to the deep-rooted prejudice against women/the feminine, known as misogyny. Taking inspiration from the band of a condom, I designed my skirt to be crotchless, framing an area that is so deeply rejected and literally exposing it. I then distorted the imagery of the vulva by developing my own physical representations using pattern drafting techniques, where I combined a pleat and a dart, putting such a highly intimate yet detached form on display to be observed and digested. By inventing my own process, I made custom beads, taking inspiration from genital excretion and fluids. As well as the possibility of breast milk.

As my work has progressed, I have noticed the intense reactions my forms have been receiving, mostly consisting of both fear and disgust while viewing the vulva presenting forms, which proves how distanced and rejected secure female sexuality is from what we are taught. I have taken reactions to my surrealist works very seriously; some viewers have gone as far as describing them as “fuckable”. I wanted to create this piece with the hopes that these forms will make the viewer confront, react, and resist further the taught, ingrained fear of the female body and sexuality in themselves. The ability to elicit such a deeper, even unconscious, reaction through my art is such a power, and I am grateful for the opportunity to create art that destigmatizes and confronts while presenting options for personal growth and hope for change.