I talked to Jamie McCartney about the making of the wall and the way it affected those women, who threw their vaginas upon a table in the name of art.
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| More photos and videos of TGWoV HERE |
So were there any thoughts behind this project or was it just an excuse to cover 400 vaginas in plaster?
Well I don’t actually use plaster on the body. I use the same material dentists use in the mouth to mould teeth. The cast is then made in plaster. I created this piece because whilst working on a commission for a sex museum casting both vaginas and penises I discovered that many women are just as anxious about their genitals as many men are. It comes down to lack of knowledge about what normal people really look like. So I thought that a sculpture like this could make a difference to women’s lives. A lot of my work fine art is socio-political. I’m always trying to change something!
Was it difficult to find women who were willing to participate in this piece?
I was determined that I would only cast unpaid volunteers who believed in what I was doing. Some man paying a load of women to take their knickers off wouldn’t have had the same power as something endorsed by 400 volunteers. Finding volunteers was not that easy to begin with though. People have asked how I did it and my answer is simple – I asked everybody with a vagina. That may seem flippant but it’s true. If you were a woman and you knew me back then, at some point I’d have asked you. Then after it went on TV in 2008 recruitment was easy. People just really wanted to do it. I’m going to make one more panel to auction for a woman’s charity next year and I already have people desperate to be a part of it.
I would totes have been up for it! Was that the prevalent reaction you met from women?
Most women I asked at the beginning thought I was out of my mind. Some of them really got what I was talking about instantly but didn’t fancy being cast. The first few were the most daring because there was no provenance. Over the years many women with serious issues about their genitals came to be cast and that took a lot of guts. The women are the heroes of this show, I’m just the showman.
Okay I’m curious to know if you got surprised by the look of any of those women’s vaginas?
Well I have to say I haven’t exactly been a shy boy in my sex life so I had seen quite a few vaginas before this all started so I can’t say there were any surprises. Within 400 there is a lot of variation but like faces, which are all different, they can be divided into types. There were types that I hadn’t seen but there are very few that don’t look a bit like some of the others. That’s what is great about this wall. I think that within this survey most women will find one that looks a bit like theirs. In fact I doubt that 90% of the women I casted will find their own in the wall when they come to see it at the exhibition and be absolutely certain they are right.
So do you have any favorites, ones that you are particularly satisfied with?
No I couldn’t possibly have a favorite because that would defeat the whole object of the exercise! Some of the piercings were very tricky to cast, one with two big rings in particular. To cast those perfectly in plaster was nothing short of a miracle. I’m very glad that I managed to find some transgendered men and women, and also my two pairs of identical twins. Women before and after their first baby were difficult to do - only one came back for the second casting which is a shame but says a lot about their fears of looking wrong afterwards. I think that having a woman before and after her labiaplasty though is wonderful and lets people see what that operation is really about.
Interesting!
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