mathilde
bois

It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra 

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The series Blood Venus is based upon prehistoric Venus figurines. These small faceless statuettes reveal that female sexuality has been foregrounded since the earliest human representations. And yet this visibility of the feminine body in the history of art is accompanied by an exclusion of women during menstruation and a generalized taboo with regard to the bloody nature of the perpetuation of the species that appears during the loss of virginity, menstruation, and childbirth. This series, accomplished in the medium of menstrual and placental blood, seeks to contaminate the formalism that characterizes the representation of the women by reintroducing the violent and sacrificial aspect of the vagina : the body of each small Venus seems on the verge of dissolving into the patterns generated by the blood. As such, the fragility and the vulnerability of each statuette stands out against the formless, abyssal, and anonymous part that each woman, as a potential progenitor, carries with her. (trad. D. Landes)

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