See art by Mayra Alpízar | Carlota Berard | Jennifer Boe | Roz Bonnet | Luiza Brown | Nikoline Calcaterra | Judy Chicago | Selin Cileli | Maldoror Capvt Corvi | Maribel Cruz | Thomasin Durgin | Natalie Aniela Dybisz | Elvira | Anne Encephalon | Hélène Epaud | Quiara Z. Escobar | Fanni Fazekas | Pat Fish | Julie Gaw | Gina | Kat Grandy | Martina Hoffmann (1 & 2) | Jelena | Judy Jones | Margaret Kalms | Brina Katz | Lorraine Lamothe | Ria Lee | Sharon Lee | Lana Leitch | Carol Nathan Levin | Katy Luxion | Sarah McCutcheon | Isa Menzies | Megan Morris | M. Parfitt | Petra Paul | Ana Elena Pena | Melina Piroso | Elentye Paulauskas-Poelker | Leigh Radtke | Jacquelyn Rixon | Isa Sanz | Vladislav Shabalin | Nelson Soucasaux | Paula Speakman | Alexandra Steiner | Melina Szapiro | Von Taylor | Jean Tracy | Joseph Tonna | Jessica Wagner | Jennifer Weigel | Terry Wunderlich | Tamara Wyndham | New Guinea menstrual hut carving
Art of Menopause by Coni Minneci
Ancient Peruvian menstrual art
If you create or own art concerning menstruation or menopause and are interested in showing it on thesepages (it's free!), contact MUM
Marie Claire magazine (Italian edition) featured several of the above artists in an article about this museum and menstruation in 2003. The newspaper Corriere della Sera (Io Donna magazine) (Milan, Italy) and the magazine Dishy (Turkey) showed some of the artists in 2005 in articles about this museum.
HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE |
MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy on this site |
Who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! |
Art of menstruation (and awesome ancient art of menstruation) |
Artists (non-menstrual) |
Asbestos |
Belts |
Bidets |
Birth control and religion |
Birth control drugs, old |
Birth control douche & sponges |
Founder bio |
Bly, Nellie |
MUM board |
Books: menstruation & menopause (& reviews) |
Cats |
Company booklets for girls (mostly) directory |
Contraception and religion |
Contraceptive drugs, old |
Contraceptive douche & sponges |
Costumes |
Menstrual cups |
Cup usage |
Dispensers |
Douches, pain, sprays |
Essay directory |
Examination, gynecological (pelvic) (short history) |
Extraction |
Facts-of-life booklets for girls |
Famous women in menstrual hygiene ads |
FAQ |
Feminine napkin, towel, pad directory |
Founder/director biography |
Gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux |
Humor |
Huts |
Links |
Masturbation |
Media coverage of MUM |
Menarche booklets for girls and parents |
Miscellaneous |
Museum future |
Norwegian menstruation exhibit |
Odor |
Olor |
Pad, towel, napkin directory |
Patent medicine |
Poetry directory |
Products, some current |
Puberty booklets for girls and parents|
Religion |
Religión y menstruación |
Your remedies for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety |
Sanitary napkin, towel, pad directory |
Seguridad de productos para la menstruación |
Science |
Shame |
Slapping, menstrual |
Sponges |
Synchrony |
Tampon directory |
Early tampons |
Teen ads directory |
Tour of the former museum (video) |
Towel, pad, sanitary napkin directory |
Underpants & panties directory |
Videos, films directory |
Words and expressions about menstruation |
Would you stop menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation in the past? |
Washable pads |
Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.


The Art of Menstruation at the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health


Series title: "When a woman bleeds it's a act of love."
 

"Revelation" 

All photos © 2008 Isa Sanz
NEXT page of Isa Sanz 1 2 3 4

The Spanish artist Isa (for Isabel) Sanz writes,

This series is named 'MENSTRUAL CONSCIOUSNESS,' it is a photographic work performed in front of a camera, where the blood is the nexus between the individual and the collective experience. The blood in menstruation, usually seen as a taboo, is shown as a sing of beauty and poetry. According to Simon Beauvoir said on her book 'The Second Sex', during menstruation blood represents the essence of femininity.

Talking to different people, realized that the way they see these series depends on the viewer and his/her social baggage, and so, meanwhile some people found this project extremely beautiful, others have to confront themselves with their ideas of beauty and horror, concerning the act of bleeding during the menstruation.

In 'Revelation' [above] photography the model is not looking to the camera and it represents just the moment, a moment in which the intimated act is shared with the audience in a frontal pose. The view of blood becomes a secondary reading while the strength the poetry and the fragility of the moment is taking part. At first sight the taboo and shock are exposed, explicitly performed for the viewer. We can observe in all the photos that the models are in front of the camera, posing in an advertising or fashion language. However I intended to go deeper constructing new meanings, rather than to show only the surface implicit in the image of blood and the reaction of the viewer exposed to the violation of the taboo. In few words, I intended to explore ideas of emotion and transformation.

In 'Alchemy' the girl is posing opposite to the camera but the message which she is writing frontally in the white wall is the punctum, the word amor which means love in Spanish, and it reveals my intentions in this series and my relation with the blood during menstruation, seeing my own blood as a part of a female nature. I try to represent a transformation by using the image of the girl on the photo as an element in which is the blood that flows out from her transforms all the negative established ideas about menstruation, showing what had to be hidden. So building a semantic message for the viewer, that is a positive message that can be read from different angles.

In an immunized world invaded by pornographic images of pain, destruction and suffering, I think that these kind of positive ideas have more impact on the viewer than an image of destruction. In the times we are living, a positive message can be more subversive than a negative one.

We can perceive that all the photos are connected by the blood, and aesthetically speaking there is a visual progression, from only one woman, then two, three and then a group of females in the series. This goes from the individual experience to the act of sharing the same experience between a group of women: 'my blood, your blood our blood', making a connection with this Luce Irigarayís idea that a woman needs first to explore her link with her own gender to find her way of express herself.

Isa Sanz

www.isasanz.com

myspace.com/menstrualconsciousness

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NEXT artist: Vladislav Shabalin
See all the artists in the links in the left-hand column.

If you create or own art concerning menstruation or menopause and are interested in showing it on these pages (it's free!), contact MUM


© 2008 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org