Vagina Museum

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The logo is a pink dot, but it can also be understood as an opening in the vagina.
Logo of the vagina museum

The international virtual vagina museum is an internet project founded in 2014 by the artist Kerstin Rajnar . It consists of a virtual gallery and a virtual archive with background information about the female gender. The ways in which the female genital organs are represented are indicators of the female role model in social systems and allow conclusions to be drawn about the position of women in different living environments. The aim of the project is to promote the artistic examination of the female gender and to use the term vagina more positively than, for example, in pornography or in everyday language .

There's also a real-life vagina museum in London that opened in 2019.

subjects

The virtual vagina museum is a cultural and informative educational platform. Experts in art history and health care as well as artists from various fields of contemporary art (literature, visual arts, performance, media art, music) create an informative platform that is reminiscent of a real museum in terms of content and structure.

The gallery offers interested parties from the various art disciplines a virtual space to present their ideas, concepts and contributions. Critical and careful artistic adaptations around the topic of "The female gender" should stimulate thought and open up new perspectives. The first exhibition of the Vagina Museum with the title Vagina 2.0 is an examination of the current concepts and subjective meanings of the female sexual organs. The contributions submitted for an open call for the exhibition deal with early depictions of vulva symbols from different cultures and times through to living and working in online social media platforms and sex-positive feminism in cyberspace.

The archive contains general background information on women. The first elaboration relates to European vagina representations in art history.

The Vagina Museum developed concepts on the topics: art and culture and life and limb - the positive power of femininity .

Exhibitions of the gallery

Vagina 2.0

The virtual opening exhibition, curated by media artist Doris Jauk-Hinz, deals with the current concepts and subjective meanings of the female sexual organs. The reflections on dealing with the term vagina take place through ideas, expectations, ascriptions, associations and emotional moods with the means of art. The works exhibited in the virtual gallery span a thematic range of early depictions of vulva symbols from different cultures and times through to living and working in online social media platforms and sex-positive feminism in cyberspace.

Participating artists are (in alphabetical order): Kollektiv AMAE (GB), Teresa Ascencao (CA), Mattia Biagi (US), Iwona Demko (PL), Kollektiv Freudenweide & Villefort (AT), Faith Holland (US) , Barbara Klampfl / Gisela Reimer (AT), Petra Mattheis (DE) , Sofia Ntontis (AT), Angela Proyer (AT), Melinda Rackham (AU), Rosa Roedelius (AT) , Grit Scholz (DE), Ulla Sladek (AT), Christina Strasser (AT), Myriam Thyes (DE) , Dorothée Zombronner (DE)

Birth_to animate

The second virtual exhibition examines the “inside” of the functional female body as a “nest” and as a reception and venue for new life - as a cultural place of creation. The artistic contributions deal with natural and artificial processes of the creation of life within a cultural dynamic. Desires about the design of "emergence" are presented and range from metaphorical implementation in artistic processes to "self-design" of life. Articles on the subject of birth complete the exhibition.

Participating artists are (in alphabetical order): Zara Alexandrova (DE), Teresa Ascencao (CA), Rachelle Beaudoin (US), Yvonne Beelen (NL), Ada Kobusiewicz (AT / POL), Renate Kordon (AT) , Bernhard Krähenmann (CH), Gertrude Moser-Wagner (AT), Boryana Rossa (US) , Barbara Schmid / Ulla Sladek (AT), Maja Smekar (SI)

Areas of the archive

Art history

The area was worked out by the art historian Sara Buchbauer. It shows an art-historical overview of the representation of the female sex starting with the European Paleolithic up to contemporary art . Epoch texts serve as an introduction. These offer information about current political and cultural events, about the role of women as well as about stylistic features in relation to art. The almost 100 works of art from the epochs were chosen as examples. They illustrate the style of the times and serve as a document for the individual development steps.

Vaginalogy

This area was developed by the physician Jana Studnicka. It offers insights into the world of women , the body, sexuality and society . Not only medical, but also social and psychological aspects of femininity are discussed. The content alternates between gender identity , sexual orientation , external and internal female sexual organs, contraception , reproduction , menstruation , sexual medicine , violence against women, etc. The elaboration shows different perspectives on various questions and problem points, clarifies the prevailing thought constructs and presents current scientific findings.

The newly created for Vagina Museum term vagina Logie is non-existent in the current language and is composed of the word vagina and the suffix -logie together. The idea was to set a counterpoint to the medical term gynecology . Because gynecology is primarily concerned with the study of diseases of the female body.

reception

On the occasion of the project's foundation in 2014, a joint interview with Kerstin Rajnar and the Icelandic Hjortur Gisli Sigurdsson, who runs the world's only museum for the penis, the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Reykjavík, was published in Jetzt-Magazin of the Süddeutsche Zeitung . In the interview, Rajnar reported that the vagina museum had been severely criticized even before it opened, also because of government funding. The Kronen Zeitung called the vagina museum a "dubious project" and called for a penis museum in the interests of equality.

Stephanie Johne wrote on the Refinery29 website : “Gender paradigms should be critically questioned and broken up once and for all. And if the way there is a more positive perception of the female gender and art can contribute to making the female gender socially acceptable again or at all, then the virtual Vaginamuseum.at makes a very decisive contribution - because your online presence is decisive at the end of the day also via your offline presence! "

financing

The bilingual vagina museum, translated by the translation scholar Christine Wilhelm, is operated by the arts section of the Austrian Federal Chancellery, the cultural department of the state of Styria, the cultural department of the city of Vienna, the cultural department of the city of Graz and the department for women, anti-discrimination and equal treatment in Burgenland promoted.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Every vagina is as different as our noses and eyes. Courier article dated June 18, 2014, accessed October 7, 2014
  2. ↑ Made for Minds: Sex Education - Vagina Museum opens in London
  3. ^ Secret London: The World's First Vagina Museum Is Now Open In London
  4. ^ The Guardian: World's first vagina museum to open in London
  5. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung: “Viva la Vulva” - First vagina museum opens in London
  6. ^ Anna Bonet: The world's first vagina museum set to open in London
  7. ↑ What is your vagina's image? Woman.at of August 9, 2016, accessed on April 4, 2018
  8. ↑ Concept of the opening exhibition Vagina 2.0. Vagina Museum, accessed December 30, 2015
  9. ↑ About Vagina Museum. Vagina Museum, accessed April 4, 2018
  10. ↑ Brief version of the Vagina 2.0 concept. Vagina Museum, accessed April 4, 2018
  11. ↑ a b c Pink is not anti-feminist. The Gap on May 27, 2016
  12. ↑ Summary of the concept of childbirth to animate. Vagina Museum, accessed April 4, 2018
  13. ↑ Article on childbirth. Vagina Museum, accessed April 4, 2018
  14. ↑ Abstract Concept Art History. Vagina Museum, accessed October 23, 2017
  15. ^ A museum for the vagina. fem magazine on July 13, 2014, accessed April 4, 2018
  16. ↑ Summary of the concept of vaginalogy. Vagina Museum, accessed April 4, 2018
  17. ^ Concept of vaginalogy. Vagina Museum, accessed October 20, 2017
  18. ↑ The vagina and penis are not pornographic. Jetzt.de from June 13, 2014, accessed October 8, 2014
  19. ↑ Crazy: Vagina Museum! Kronenzeitung, accessed October 8, 2014
  20. ↑ Virtual Vagina Museum: Why We Need to Reconsider the Female Gender. Refinerey29, Stephanie Johne, February 15, 2017, accessed April 4, 2018