If you create or own art concerning menstruation or menopause
and are interested in showing it on thesepages (it's free!), contact MUM
Marie Claire magazine (Italian edition) featured several
of the above artists in an article about this
museum and menstruation in 2003. The newspaper Corriere della Sera (Io Donna
magazine) (Milan, Italy) and the magazine Dishy (Turkey) showed some of
the artists in 2005 in articles about this museum.
 
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The Art of Menstruation at the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health
The artist writes:
I am a recent fine art graduate from England whose final year was spent
producing mixed media sculpture about the negative impact that patriarchy
stemming from religion has had on women with regards to menstruation.
Synopsis of work:
Menstruation is still seen as a 'curse' in contemporary western society,
deriving from Christianity (the fall of Eve) and women have still not recovered
from these associations. Like many other cultures in the world to bleed
from an orifice suggests that there is something wrong. The fact that a
women's sexual organs are internal, therefore hidden, suggests that menstruation
is demonized as a contaminant. Due to this menstruation is openly "disguised"
through sanitary products, sold to conceal a natural body function from
the rest of the world, not to "protect" the wearer from leakage
to smells but everyone else. Women should feel comfortable in their own
skin, but due to patriarchal control stemming from Christianity, they buy
into the belief that menstruation is dirty. Currently this is a dangerous
cycle (much like the act of menstruation) and is being passed on from one
generation to the next leading to a vicious cycle of cleansing the contamination,
and contamination of the clean. The solution to the problem is to externalize
this and women's bodily functions so they are no longer concealed from
the rest of society, so they are confronted, discussed, in order to reverse
these conceptions.
My answer to this was a 3-D mixed media installation of a mother and
her two daughters in a domestic scenario made of sanitary products such
as tampons, sanitary towels, natural sea sponge and the 'keeper'.
I was wondering whether you would consider adding my work to your site
in your section of art about menstruation. Your website provided an invaluable
resource to me whilst doing my degree and I would like to contribute something
back.
Yours sincerely,
Roz Bonnet
NEXT artist: Luiza
Brown
See all the artists in the links in the left-hand
column.
If you create or own art concerning menstruation or menopause and
are interested in showing it on thesepages (it's free!), contact MUM
See
also Bea Nettles' art The Moonsisters
© 2006 Roz Bonnet. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute
work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission
of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
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