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BOXES beyond borders

Tag: Sex

Rhino Blues

Man, always satisfying his external passions, has no compassion regarding the sovereignty of our land, devastating, polluting, annihilating.  His only urge is to satisfy the emptiness of his soul, feeding it with all sorts of possessions and pleasures, little by little forgetting the search in his spirit for answers.

The fauna and flora die at his feet, dedicating their horns, nails, and bones to unending sexual gluttony.  Thousands and thousands of little seahorses, tigers, and rhinoceroses disappear from the planet becoming powder and potions that man will later use to ingest and, as a result, feel manly, virile, or fertile psychologically.

These three blue horns represent nostalgia of the rhinoceros at the feet of man.  They are the ghosts that circulate his bed after he, man, has proven his virile fortitude once again.

 

Conjugation Between Earth and Sky

It is commonly known that in order to survive, blossom and continue the course of nature, it is necessary to intervene with our surrounding habitats. This lid symbolizes the ever lasting sky and its thousands and thousands of living species that are endangered by daily air pollution. The bottom represents our earth, life and death, the moments of glory, agonies of defeat, and on going war and peace.

Between this conjugation, we define sacred love for human beings and nature, our dreams and desires to fulfill a glorious and promising future.

In the end, conjugations of any type: earth and sky, man and nature or man and its kind must be cared for and preserved. The lack of attention to this contributes to the heavy consequences that we face today: the holes in our ozone, the wars and its death toll, last but not least the AIDS epidemic.

The Wells of the Virgins

The mysteries of Eleusis, is the theme I have been working on since 1992.  It is about a long research I have been doing on forgotten rites and their symbolism.  An endeavor based on the writings of ancients and also of contemporaries on Greek art. The fertility of the earth-womb and children’s tomb symbolized by the well, which encloses the water of life, the water that purifies, but also fecunds, is inseparable from the earth.  The archetypal image of the mother/daughter, Demeter and Persephone as identical characters.  As well as Persephone’s ravishment by Hades, refers to the sexual act and to marriage.  Finally, its descent and raising represent death and resurrection.  Always assumed, the unknown rites have to be imagined…

Femme

Coast US feminist artists, revisited by key artists of the 1990’s. Exploration of vulval imageries allows me to consider female desire, seduction and discipline, and the role-liquidity of queer sexual play.

The metaphorical cultural veil of a socially/culturally formed feminine is materialized in my use of empty but sexually encoded garments (the little black velvet dress. lingerie, leather, corsetry, gloves) to stand in for the female body. A self-consciously feminist erotic is proposed, carefully controlled through allusion to the actual body, through textual ‘cunning lingua’, through acknowledgment of the seductive territories of sado-masochism, fetishism, voyeurism and exhibitionism, and through awareness of the potentially mulitiplicitous desirous nature of the gaze.

Abject Expressionism

The workings of a patriarchal symbolic system have long associated culture and mind with the masculine (esteemed), and nature and body with the feminine (constantly devalued).  This work attempts to reevaluate that which is defined as inferior by deliberately using a body part that refused to fit into any particular definition. Hair– a symbol of sexual prowess (or lack of for the Western nudes)– also acts as a “momento mori”, marking lack. It is a significant abject material, highlighting the slippage between opposites, the living and the dead, the sensual and the repulsive. Because it stands at the borderline separating the inside and the outside of the body, it holds simultaneous powers of fascination and horror. The weaving and braiding of hair in this work act as a metaphor for the bonding and networking amongst women.

 

Untitled

You may read and see,

But you can’t touch her.

You may look and sympathize,

But you can’t feel her pain.

You may think the wound is healed,

But you don’t know it stays forever.

She trusts to be loved and guarded,

And in return she got that.

She isolates herself from you

As her world is dark and lonely.

She is suffering behind that smile,

You don’t even realize it.

She is unable to accept the truth,

As it hurts to talk about it.

Listen now… “Why me!

I trusted him and this is the time when he RAPED me”

Eggies

Candy-like ovaries
Nibbling like berries
Sucking and squeezing
Pulling and pleasing
Contradiction and friction
Shiny, sweet eggs
Long skinny legs
Steel wire and red
Cold blue-purple and dead
Hot glue opaque blue
The barrier has become the existence
The chaotic shamble has become the resistance
Confine, restrict, disengage

Self Portrait #1

My work is a personal investigation which began as an attempt to see the body through the photographic medium in ways which are impossible with the naked eye.

I realize that we view images of the body very differently when they are life size or larger. Other objects do not hold such power and are always subject to interpretation of space when confronted by differences in size. The body, although conforming to the same rules of perspective, also holds another set of rules. The body is the common denominator of all the viewers, it is something to relate with on the most personal and intimate basis.

When working in photography it is important to remember that, unfortunately, photography is the choice medium of pornographers. It is a transparent medium; one that is taken of evidence of objective truth with little subjective interdiction. Any picture of a body is not necessarily thought of as a picture of a body, but as a body. We see through the portal of the pictures medium and look at the picture as evidence of truth…or of the body itself. A painting of a body has a different emotional charge than a photograph of the same body. Where a painting of the body would be considered sensual, a photograph of the same body is considered pornographic.

I am dealing with the total involvement of the figure and the role and relationship of the artist and viewer.

Yoni As Mirror Stage

“As a body is to the soul and an oil to the lamp, a yantra is to the divinity.” –Kularnava Tantra (chap v, 86)

Through the mirror you constitute yourself as an object (you observe yourself from the others point of view).

A comment on a certain problem of perception, a problem which tacitly influences our ways of communicating with the world. Languages, images and other forms of representations of reality are not fully transparent tools to relate to the world. In all languages and representations, there is a displacement, or rather, distortion of the world and they are dependent upon the expectations and information we put into play in a communicative situation.

Posibilidades

What is this piece about? For me, it’s about the danger of sensuality. How we are beckoned by the flesh. How our desire can become our anguish. How a wrong decision can mean death, be it of the spirit or the body. How the need for self-destruction can be initiated in a seemingly healthy person from the hurt and pain of a relationship. Thus — the presence of the sword. Although I also see this sword as positive, perhaps a form of protection or an attribute, like that of Saint Agnes. *

The question of violence enters in here, too. This woman — in all her sensuality — is in a coffin. Why? Was she a victim of violence, of rape? Can our sensual self die under certain circumstances? Is our nudity kept hidden away in a dark, quiet place?

The veil also invokes the mysteriousness of Muslim women, their eyes being their only available sensual feature.

* (Saint Agnes was very beautiful, but she rejected all of her suitors, one of whom became angry and had her condemned to death. Since it was forbidden to execute virgins, she was first sent to a burdel. Nevertheless, no man was able to touch her. After being tortured, she was finally decapitated. She is often portrayed with a sword piercing her breast. She is the patron saint of virginal innocence.)

Why?

The box, as a symbol of woman and one which will simulate a mother’s body. I will open and leave open so that my body is weightless and free. My face is protected by a condom, but not out of fear, because covered can also mean uncovered.