A feminist sculpture is driving Brazil crazy: it's a huge red vulva in a park

It is called Diva and, these days, it is driving the whole of Brazil crazy, in every sense of the word: there are those who love it and those who would like to see it erased forever. We are talking about a feminist sculpture by Brazilian artist Juliana Notari (Recife, 1975), which depicts an enormous red vulva 33 meters high by 16 meters wide and 6 meters deep, and which has been standing out since last December 31 above a hillock in Usina de Arte, an outdoor sculpture park near the town of Água Preta, in the state of Pernambuco, 130 km south of the capital Recife. A large Land Art intervention that required the work of about forty people (the vulva was in fact modeled by hand, without the use of excavators: the artist explained that with mechanical means it was not possible to achieve the desired degree of precision), and consists of an excavation in the earth covered with cement and resin. The work is the result of a collaboration between Usina de Arte and the Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães in Recife and was created as the final project of an art residency by Juliana Notari.

"In Diva,“ Notari said, ”I use art to dialogue with issues that refer to the problematization of gender from a feminine point of view combined with a cosmic vision that investigates the relationship between nature and culture in our phallocentric and anthropocentric Western society. These issues are becoming increasingly urgent: after all, it will be through a change in the perspective of the relationship between human and nonhuman that we will be able to live longer on this planet and in a less inequitable and less catastrophic society." Significantly, Juliana Notari, in a Facebook post of her own, thanked one by one and by name all the men who participated in the creation of the work, which took eleven months to complete.

It is a work that acquires special significance in Bolsonaro’s Brazil where misogyny and sexism are perceived as very strong problems, and for that matter, comments from supporters of the current president were not long in coming. A tweet by Olavo de Carvalho, a philosopher and polemicist known as Bolsonaro’s “guru,” went viral in a matter of hours, scornfully commenting, “why do they talk bad about a 33-meter pussy when they could face her with a dick?” Still others think it is a leftist propaganda piece, a great many think it is “obscene” or “reprehensible,” just to cite the softer comments. But there are also many positive comments, some of which Notari reposted through his social channels. Journalist Daniela Name, for example, writes that Juliana Notari’s gigantic vagina “fuses the feminine to the earth, two types of fertility, highlighting how the generating power of a woman’s body goes far beyond motherhood.” In contrast, poet Cida Pedrosa, among the country’s most highly regarded poets, wrote that it is a “beautiful and urgent” work, that aggressive reactions are “a mirror of our backwardness,” and that “using art to criticize our structures is urgent.”

For Juliana Notari, however, this is nothing new: sure, she has never made such a huge work before, but the female body has always been central to her artistic practice. Her production also includes other works on the theme of human orifices: in 2012, for example, she had created a performance piece, Spalt-me, producing an opening in a wall (a “wound”) with a shape reminiscent of the female genital organ, and then penetrating it with a hand. Even earlier, in 2006, the performance Dra-Diva, similar in manner and purpose, also made use of bovine blood, sprinkled around the slit. Diva is thus but another step along this multi-year journey.

Below are some photos of the finished work and during the work.

Juliana Notari, Diva (2020; earth, resin cement, 3300 x 1600 x 600 cm; Água Preta, Usina de Arte)

Juliana Notari, Diva

Juliana Notari, Diva

Juliana Notari, Diva

Juliana Notari, Diva

Juliana Notari, Diva

A feminist sculpture is driving Brazil crazy: it's a huge red vulva in a park

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