Art show gets intimate with women
There’s a brilliant red sunset, its yellow reflection spread across the horizon. There’s a blue-and-purple butterfly, its wings spread wide. And there are other paintings, colourful and more abstract.
Each print is part of a woman’s artistic journey of self-discovery. A journey of self-awareness, sexual validation. And of freedom.
There are 35 framed prints in all. All part of artist Hana Rotchild’s exhibit of original acrylic art, imagined and created by women, and called the VIProject. The Vulva Imprints Project. It’s all part of her passion to help women reclaim their intimate body parts as their own. To celebrate femininity. And to encourage women to feel not shame, but be empowered to display their most personal body signature, in an artistic and dignified setting.
The prints will be shown at the You Me Gallery in Hamilton until April 9, and proceeds from art sales will be donated to the Niagara Region Sexual Assault Centre, where Hana works as a clinical social worker.
She hopes her exhibit will draw attention to the need to stop sexual abuse. In Canada, one in three women are sexually abused by the time they are 18 years old, and one in five or six men.
Yes, the exhibit is bold. Fact is, it’s meant to start a conversation, she says.
Women are not products, despite that message being perpetuated in everything from fashion and cosmetics to pornography.
“It’s a call for society to see women as a whole, not just as a body,” she says.
It’s about women being creative, exploring themselves without shame and reconnecting with their bodies.
“We have a right to explore,” she says. “We have a right to be free. We have a right to express.”
The idea began several years ago, after Hana read the book Vagina by Naomi Wolf. As an artist, Hana knew she needed to express some of the book’s themes, through art. She created a print using her own body, and shared the idea with other women.
As a therapist, she understands that sexual abuse separates a woman from her own body. It’s the brain’s way of offering protection, ensuring survival. Good at the time of trauma, but left untreated it inhibits feelings that women need and want to feel. At some point, women need to reconnect.
As an artist, she was intrigued by the idea of having women connect with themselves, and their bodies. The artwork is anonymous.
“It displays their spirits more than anything else,” she says.
The prints are the community’s contribution to an art display Hana calls Growing Numb. It features several fibre sculptures, suspended from the ceiling, seemingly floating in air. The elongated shapes tell a story of evolving from a cocoon, trapped and isolated, into freedom. The sculptures and prints are part of the same story.
“There’s a conversation between the two,” she says.
To produce the prints, women were given an art kit that included paint, art paper and a plate. They chose their own paint colours. In a safe, comfortable space, they were instructed to put the paint on the plate, the plate on a chair, take off their clothes and then sit.
Included in the instructions was the suggestion to enjoy the cool temperature of the paint and take a minute to notice your body’s sensations.
Women were encouraged to make as many prints, as many times as they wished.
And then send the originals to Hana.
Twenty-eight women, aged 16 to 90, participated. They each made at least four prints.
For most, they created the prints in the privacy of their own homes, by themselves. One group of women friends got together, went to separate rooms to create the prints, and then shared the artwork with each other afterwards in true show-and-tell form.
They all embraced the fun, playfulness of the activity, says Hana.
“It validates something about them.”
It’s like a child having artwork displayed on a wall, she says.
“It says, I’m here. I exist. This is my body and I’m proud of myself.”