Around 1994, I cut out images of naked men from Playboy magazines and mixed them with Good Housekeeping magazines. This was the result:
A collection of mixed-media collages, began thirteen years ago as a response to the feminist dialogue on pornography and developed a language of its own.
A political perspective critiquing the female gaze and the aftereffects of childhood sexual abuse became complicated by idiosyncratic fantasy, the debate between what is perverse and natural, and the way whimsical promiscuities editorialize our interior erotic landscape.
The process is part cut-and-paste subconscious frenzy with an eventual analytical edit to find the narrative thread in each piece. Neatly knit borders and lace-trimmed frames evoke feminine campfire crafts. Sex-saturated suburban sets and decadent desserts encircle exposed men and their clothed female counterparts. The voyeurism expressed is both
sensual and naive. One senses the longing of certain figures while others are somewhat passive or charming in their obliviousness. There is a sense two elderly women are as excited to showcase their baby-blue portrait cozy as they are to share space with a male nude and his frothy cotton-candy pubic hair.
Nature is both intrinsic and opposed to sexual expression. A fish replaces a phallus, a baboon head mopes atop a lounging nude, and even the delicate hummingbirds of so much Southwestern iconography pierce the nipple. Surrounded by spiny sea urchins, a young urchin emerges from his closet frightened by his masturbatory drive, but only so much as it is judged by the primly dressed women who play bridge.
M.O.T.H. contends with the natural inception of sexual desire, the manifestations and mutations of fantasy, and the lurking shame that develops a clear, stern voice colonizing our sensual history.
I sold reproductions of this collections to various people who made them into puzzles.
-Written by Daphne Young at the request of Stellabelle
