vaginas, vaginas, Austin Uzor + vaginas

 Babes and bots, 

Welcome to the sandwich. Hope you had a good meal today and that you are not, in fact, reading this garbage before breakfast. I certainly don't. 

Last night I had a genius idea so I raced to my computer and typed it out. This morning it made no sense. Allow me to paraphrase: 

radical. you'll know in the morning ;) 

My past self is a real shit. They are also incredibly productive 5 minutes before falling asleep, which likely explains "you'll know in the morning." Direct translation: am tired, too tired, talk later? Such promise...so anyways I was at an art gallery minding my business when genius accosted me in the full frontal face. Anyone ever heard of Austin Uzor? If you hadn't, now you have. He's what they call 'up-and-coming.' The following are from Memories of the Future (2021), currently in Fort Arts Gallery. 

According to the gallery manager, Uzor's exhibition is a play on the American Dream or an expectation vs. reality take on what it means to be an immigrant in the U.S. He intends to change the face of art (big, I know, but I see it) by shifting what we think we know about a 'finished product.' When do you know a piece is done? Artists get asked this question a lot, but they never answer it as a matter of aesthetics or respectability. At least, not the artists I know. The idea that something can be a 'finished product' while also being a 'work-in-progress' is quite radical to me, so much so that I now wonder if the term 'work-in-progress' diminishes the work itself. Surely we can connect this idea to that of perfectionism in art, realism, European conceptions of art classification and art itself. To say an artist is classically trained, as Uzor claims to be, then begs all kinds of other questions. Who deems what is classic? How do galleries and museums participate in this? Can institutions like galleries and museums productively break away from the idea of a 'finished product' without rendering themselves irrelevant? The short of it is this: Uzor wowed me. If I had $5k I'd buy his paintings. 

I met his particular brand of genius entirely by accident. I was at a very different art gallery when I saw vaginas everywhere. Now, I have to believe for the love of all that is right in the world that the artist of this work, Dalton Maroney, an old cis man, did not intend to make vaginas. It simply happens to be a comical, ironic, happy accident that ALL of his work looks like a vagina. All. Of. It. 

So, here I was admiring all the vaginas, thinking they might actually be boats, when I asked the kind lady in the gallery if they were, in fact, vaginas. She was shocked. She said they were *most likely* boats. She went on to tell me about an exhibit at Fort Arts (where I saw Uzor's work) a few years ago that was all vaginas. "I had to take my kids and leave. It was art but it was not kid-friendly," she said. She recommended I go there, calling their tastes "...non traditional." She was lovely. We have very different philosophies on the stigmatization of bodies. I loved it. 

the vaginas begot more vaginas 

Later the same day I was lying in bed watching Sex Education on Netflix when the character Aimee marched into Otis's house with a box of vagina cupcakes. Aimee spent at least 2 minutes of the previous episode studying labia on a fabulous, body-positive website. 

Aimee's cupcakes

And then, as if by magic, I remembered an article one dear reader sent me by Jules Gleeson and Judith Butler: 'We need to rethink the category of woman'. The interview between Gleeson and Butler discusses Butler's theories regarding gender, many of which are now taught in college English Literature and Gender & Sexuality classrooms across the country to varying levels of approval. I thought particularly of this:

At the same time, none of us are totally determined by cultural norms. Gender then becomes a negotiation, a struggle, a way of dealing with historical constraints and making new realities. When we are “girled”, we are entered into a realm of girldom that has been built up over a long time – a series of conventions, sometimes conflicting, that establish girlness within society. We don’t just choose it. And it is not just imposed on us. But that social reality can, and does, change.

I feel optimistic, buzzed, kindred to the knowledge that portrayals of gender entirely separate from anatomy exist in shows like Sex Education or that an old cis male artist accidentally made a million and a half vaginas and, to this day, has no idea. I feel love and so much stimulation from Uzor's work. These feelings are truths and the truths are solid today. I can only hope that you, too, find something solid to love. 

Until our next sandwich...

xoxo BLT