Hannah Wilke, a feminist artist from the 1970's, is known for her photographic work in connection to the body and performance art, in which she used her own body to address issues of sexuality. When she was young, she always had unique ideas about her surroundings and also was engaged in the feminist movement. She was a sculptor at the beginning, and then she did a series of works of art in photography and film using her own body. She said that she will never separate art from her body and art is a part of her.
"S.O.S ( Starification Object Series)" was the most famous work of her earlier years. She used chewed gum to sculpt different kinds of micro female genitalia and stuck them to her body. She posed in a variety of classic poses of sexy women and had a professional photographer take photos of her. Looking at the photo, her body was full of spots as if she had chickenpox. Actually, it revealed that the way that males looked at females with lust and dirty ideas, and ignored the damages they did to them. This series of photos also showed the environment in which women were disrespected at that time. Wilke believed that gum was the perfect analogy for the American woman, and how she was consumed; Chew her up, spit her out.
Although I loved this work and I was shocked by her new, direct and innovative idea and behavior, it also looked like a show, which used her sexy body, and beautiful face. The really amazing work was her "Intra-Venus Series".
What she showed was no longer a show or just art. It was a real picture of a woman suffering from her health problems. No one wants to show their ugliness or pain. Hannah took hundreds of photos of her sick mother in order to memorialize her. When she realized she had the same disease as her mother, she decided to use her body as art, showing the process of death to the world, making it become a work of art. At that time, she was more than halfway to 100 years old. She gained weight and her face started to wrinkle. Severe chemotherapy and medication made her lose her hair.
Surprisingly, she exhibited her naked body without fear in front of the camera, the TV, and the public. Her purpose was not to shock or horrify but to display a body which belonged to herself. That was a body with a real life, with disease and confusion. In her photos, although she was in a destroyed body, her eyes were still bright, serious and enthusiastic. This lonely body was crashing, irreversibly headed towards death. She, however, still expressed a certain dignity. Man used to look at woman as a sexual tool, but a diseased body will not let anyone produce sexual desire. She used an extreme example to illustrate a crucial truth that woman needed to face their difficulties in life without man. She utilized her private space which was her body as a public stage to disclose the sick fact that male regarded female as one of sexual tool and servant. It is called real life.
In our lives, in all the magazine covers, advertisement covers and TV shows, we see the beautiful, young, shining and hot girls everywhere. Unfortunately, that is not all of females. As Wilke reminds us, we need not focus on showing our sexiness or beauty, but must face aging, disease and death alone. Why should we need to be sexy just in order to please men? Why should we have to make them happy and comfortable? We are not only an accessory, an object; we are real. Our sexual desire, social damages, sex abuse, disease, and fear of death should also be understood and respected.
The age Wilke lived in was a time when male predominated the whole society. But she used the bodies of her mother and herself to show a destroyed beauty. She used her body, a new performative space, to expose the female myth made by our society. The body, which women were used to think of as a private space because they wanted to hide their imperfections to avoid other's judgements. Likewise, she also used it as a private space because the body, no matter healthy or not, belonged to herself for good. The differences were that she didn't care about critiques from the public. So she also made it as a public space to convey the idea that women's damage and disease should be valued as important as their glamour. Her intention was to promote woman not to rely on man too much, especially when woman were disrespected at that time.
Sylvia Plath, an America poet, said:" death is an art". She committed suicide alone. She made the process of death a private experience. By contrast, Hannah Wilke made it public, a performance art known worldwide. Though she was killed by her own body in the end, "the dance to death" she showed was more fabulous than her blooming beauties.
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