The series is inspired from a reflection on parietal art as well as a critic on our contemporary society and the place women have within it in confrontation to the visual place dedicated to men. 

I read that the first representation of human form across the globe was that of a woman, and it is believed the woman was considered a goddess much like Gaia, holding the power of life and death, thus inspiring love, fear and respect toward the people. Later on with the apparition of monotheism, God turned out to be impersonated in a man and societies have been patriarchal in most places since then.

Today, and despite the improvements regarding women’s rights, women are still not equal in rights and opportunities as their counterparts. Women are represented as object and an impossible image is sent to them as to what they are supposed to look like or behave. I am interested in the role of pornography, now watched more than ever by all age groups. It “educates” the youth and creates tensions between what young men expect from their partners from a performance and body image point of view, and how young women react to it.  

Thus this series is a reflection on how woman turned from Goddess to a “allowed to be hated” figure. By showing frontally the female sex to the viewer I aim at creating a reflection as to why the society makes us believe this is a repugnant object. I can remember that there were tones of penis graffiti in my hometown and that as a child I found the idea of drawing these shapes quite unexpected and ugly. Growing up and being a teenager, I would find these graffiti funny. Now as a grown up I am wondering why having penises spread out in all the walls of all the cities around the world is an accepted idea but society still does not tolerate to have vaginas graffiti around towns. I have come to link this very specific fact with the one that women are still not accepted as active participants of social, political, aesthetical and intellectual life around the world. 

In order to fight back and reclaim the space women deserve on the public space, I am making a series of Black Holes directly referring to the women genitalia. The idea is to spread the image of womanhood just like the image of masculinity has been spread out and accepted, until she becomes a “normal” and accepted image as well. 

The visual inspirations for this series are quite broad, from conceptual and abstract to more figurative, as I am also working not only on the established notions of womanhood but also about creating new ways of representing it, away from the current societal constraints.

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anne cecile surga