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
Series title: "When a woman bleeds it's a
act of love."
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"Revelation"
All photos © 2008 Isa Sanz
NEXT page
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The Spanish artist Isa (for Isabel) Sanz writes,
This series is named 'MENSTRUAL CONSCIOUSNESS,' it is a photographic
work performed in front of a camera, where the blood is the nexus between
the individual and the collective experience. The blood in menstruation,
usually seen as a taboo, is shown as a sing of beauty and poetry. According
to Simon Beauvoir said on her book 'The Second Sex', during menstruation
blood represents the essence of femininity.
Talking to different people, realized that the way they see these series
depends on the viewer and his/her social baggage, and so, meanwhile some
people found this project extremely beautiful, others have to confront
themselves with their ideas of beauty and horror, concerning the act of
bleeding during the menstruation.
In 'Revelation' [above] photography the model is not looking to the
camera and it represents just the moment, a moment in which the intimated
act is shared with the audience in a frontal pose. The view of blood becomes
a secondary reading while the strength the poetry and the fragility of
the moment is taking part. At first sight the taboo and shock are exposed,
explicitly performed for the viewer. We can observe in all the photos that
the models are in front of the camera, posing in an advertising or fashion
language. However I intended to go deeper constructing new meanings, rather
than to show only the surface implicit in the image of blood and the reaction
of the viewer exposed to the violation of the taboo. In few words, I intended
to explore ideas of emotion and transformation.
In 'Alchemy' the girl is posing opposite to the camera but the message
which she is writing frontally in the white wall is the punctum, the word
amor which means love in Spanish, and it reveals my intentions in this
series and my relation with the blood during menstruation, seeing my own
blood as a part of a female nature. I try to represent a transformation
by using the image of the girl on the photo as an element in which is the
blood that flows out from her transforms all the negative established ideas
about menstruation, showing what had to be hidden. So building a semantic
message for the viewer, that is a positive message that can be read from
different angles.
In an immunized world invaded by pornographic images of pain, destruction
and suffering, I think that these kind of positive ideas have more impact
on the viewer than an image of destruction. In the times we are living,
a positive message can be more subversive than a negative one.
We can perceive that all the photos are connected by the blood, and
aesthetically speaking there is a visual progression, from only one woman,
then two, three and then a group of females in the series. This goes from
the individual experience to the act of sharing the same experience between
a group of women: 'my blood, your blood our blood', making a connection
with this Luce Irigarayís idea that a woman needs first to explore
her link with her own gender to find her way of express herself.
Isa Sanz
www.isasanz.com
myspace.com/menstrualconsciousness
NEXT page of Isa Sanz
1 2 3 4
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NEXT artist: Vladislav
Shabalin
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
© 2008 Harry Finley. 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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