Yonic Avatar is a follow on from the 40 Flowers project, and was featured in the ECU Graduates exhibition Bellweather. In this project I tried to further involve the audience within the work by offering them the chance to design their own Yonic Avatar, that would be added to the piece throughout the duration of the exhibition. I feel this action caused people to stop and analise the work rather than just offering it a passing glance. I also hope it caused the audience to examine their own bodies in relation to the work.

It is always interetesting to see people viewing pornographic imagery, a subject which is supposed to be “explored” in a private arena, being viewed ad discussed publicly.

Below are images of the exhibition and some samples of Avatars viewers designed using the flowers I had previously created.

Artist Statement

Within western contemporary culture much of a females identity is linked with exposure. I have been exploring the pornographic industry where a female must be stripped of all other forms of identification, for example mother/sister/daughter, in order to be seen as attractive and subordinate to satisfy the male gaze. Through my work I encourage the viewer to view these women as more than objects and furthermore to see female genitalia as an empowering mechanism which can be used to generate a positive identity rather than that of a ‘whore’.

My work is greatly influenced by second wave feminism, where we are empowered by the female form rather than having to neutralize the idea of gender altogether, as a way to gain equality between the sexes. We do not need another image such as the ‘cyborg’ to feel empowered and what renders this image impervious to commercialization? Its already begun with images such as the character  ‘7 of 9’ in Star Trek and ‘Fembots’ in Austin Powers. Empowerment must come from within and not rely on changing our outward appearances.

The work of Alexandra Jacoby has also played an important part in its development as she raises the issue of females guarding their genitalia from view so well we have no idea how its supposed to look. The media then encourages us to think we look wrong or ugly as we don’t know any better. Thus  it becomes another reason to lower our self image making us more prone to participate in this cycle of objectification, whereby we work so hard to satisfy the male gaze we have no time or inclination to decide to fight against women's subordinate status.