General 2 — IVANA LILITH

0

Skip to Content

HOME

ABOUT

LEAVING THE WUNDERKAMMER

IDOLS AND ODDITIES

LETTERS

CONTACT

HOME

ABOUT

LEAVING THE WUNDERKAMMER

IDOLS AND ODDITIES

LETTERS

CONTACT

HOME

ABOUT

LEAVING THE WUNDERKAMMER

IDOLS AND ODDITIES

LETTERS

CONTACT

IDOLS AND ODDITIES (I’M YOUR WUNDERKAMMER WOMAN)

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.