IVANA LILITH

Since men “discovered” the Palaeolithic artefact the Venus de Willendorf some 100 years ago, they have been perplexed by her curvaceous, headless, female form. Some believed her a fertility goddess, some thought a mother figure, some thought her an ancient object of pornography. Recent theories and research suggest she was simply a self portrait; a woman looking down at her body and carving it as she saw it, from her perspective. For generations, bodies and experiences seen to be “other” have been collected and interpreted; as a tactic of patriarchy. Bodies outside the norm have always been kept physically and metaphorically in glass cabinets as a comedic amuse-bouche for the conversations of the elite.

I am a Wunderkammer woman - a transsexual Venus de Willendorf re-written. My body of reproductive enigma has been a debated object of curiosity, repulsion and desire. I shatter the cabinets I have been placed in and make my own, giving space to the infinite identities that are created whenever a new person lays eyes upon my flesh. This woman is a vase, is a vessel, is a void, is a space of infinity. I write my own place in the history books - one that was excluded, and reclaim my metamorphosis in all its interpretations

IDOLS AND ODDITIES (I’M YOUR WUNDERKAMMER WOMAN), SERIES OF 18 SCULPTURES, GLAZED STONEWARE, approximately 25 x 10 x 9cm each, 2025

I once dreamt that I was the Venus de Willendorf. Not the sculpture, but the woman who made her. All I wanted was to look at my body and carve it - to make sense of it. Thousands of years later men dug my earnest self portrait up and declared me a fertility goddess, a pornographic icon, a mother figure.

I have been all of these things, but I am none of them. I am just a woman; looking at my flesh and making sense of it: making sense of all the desires and fantasies men have thrust into me.- and trying to make my skin my own again.