Wetness, the body, and excess

It is my assertion that the most powerful sensorial experiences specific to the female body (sex, gestation and birth) are culturally suppressed because they are wet, excessive, and uncontrollable. Second wave feminist artists including Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneemann and Helen Chadwick directly challenged this repression, without fully dismantling it.

Gestation, life force and the value of the sensory

Contemporary culture prioritises the visual - the ‘ideal’ body only needs to look like it is experiencing, doing, able and healthy. It is mostly shown on screens where the smooth, dry, glow dominates the wet realities of lived experience.