Menstrala is the art (or the act of creating art) using menstrual blood. Details below the fold...
From Guernica:
Menstrual painting, a.k.a. “menstrala” (a term coined by menstrual artist Vanessa Tiegs), is far from commonplace in the art world. Yet there is a long history of female artists incorporating their menstrual cycles into their work. One of the best-known examples is feminist artist Judy Chicago’s 1971 piece Red Flag, a photolithograph of a woman’s hand removing a bloody tampon from her vagina...And from Salon:
If you look on the Internet at menstrual artists’ websites, the negative responses to their work generally fall into one of two camps: people either find it disgusting and unhygienic, or they think it is hippy-dippy feminist nonsense. For her part, Beloso doesn’t understand the “ew” reaction: “Damien Hirst has preserved animals in formaldehyde. Do we say ‘ew’ when someone has a cut or wound? It’s not like it’s human waste, like urine or feces.”
Art school grad Carina Úbeda Chacana unveiled her exhibition, Cloths, at the Center of Culture and Health in Quillota, Chile late last week and it was composed of a display of five years of her own menstrual fluid along with dangling apples meant to represent her ovulation.Whence the image (Artist Zanele Muholi’s “Ummeli” (2011) is a digital print on cotton rag of a digital collage of menstrual blood stains.)
I consider menstrual blood [and the shed uterine lining cells in it] as human waste. No?
ReplyDeleteI do think it could be considered waste, but I also think that it's entirely natural and shouldn't be perceived so negatively. For it to be a painting, especially. Do you need to touch the painting to view it? As long as it in no way is harming you, I think it's fine.
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