Meet the women of (HOTEL) XX, the all-female exhibition reclaiming the narrative on sex

Hi Julia. Your work at (HOTEL) XX appeals to post-sex isolation. How do you expect or hope that your audience will relate to that experience?

I think we have all been in a position where we got lost in a fantasy only to realize it didn’t translate into our reality. As disappointing as that is sometimes, I think that maybe that’s what makes those moments so magical and it would be selfish to want more out of them.

Mainstream depictions of sex often seem to focus on the act itself, rather than any moments immediately before or after. It seems that film especially seems to ignore a key part of the experience. Would you agree?

I do agree! I think the moment before the actual act is the most thrilling because I’m still caught up in the fantasy and the thrill of anticipation. The act itself is never really as good as I had hoped or imagined and then the feeling after is usually pretty void, like the high is over and it’s back to reality.

"We have all been in a position where we got lost in a fantasy only to realize it didn’t translate into our reality."

Where were the photographs taken? There seems to be an air of transience of temporary space that reflect the theme of the show?

I met a couple in California that lived out of a motel room. They had been living there for months and had made it their home. They brought in their own furniture and put their own art on the walls. It was pretty cool.

I drove by the last time I was in LA but their room was empty. They don’t live there anymore. Not sure where they moved to. 

What do the objects in your embroideries represent?

Everyone comes with subjective and preconceived notions about women’s health, but very few possess a fully comprehensive, medical understanding of all the products and procedures that come with managing women’s health, their body, and family planning. By aiming to stitch every modern item related to women’s health, I’m hoping to objectively show how complicated the medical and physical needs of women are. I’ve discovered at art shows that when people are confronted with this plethora of objects, they are faced with the limitation of their knowledge regarding the practicality, physicality, or applicability of these objects. There begins a reconciliation between the person’s stereotyped beliefs and limited sex education and the reality of the objective, medical still lives and how they relate to women.

The objects I present are deeply personal and, unfortunately, politicized. There’s been tons of feminist art that presents the artist’s personal response and experience to these objects. That type of art is important. Except I’m interested in making intersectional art and being bipartisan in order to fully support women’s reproductive liberties. By stitching still lives, anyone is able to relate to the art and the object. Viewers have to consider the importance of the object from a medical perspective first, and then they relate it to the needs of women, which changes how the person perceive the objects’ morality. That’s a powerful moment in the cause’s favor. Women’s needs are different across race, age, regions, religion, sexuality, sexual activity, genetics, etc. I could have cross-stitched birth control pills and infused my experience in the art, but that would box out others. I’m interested in making art that is accessible to anyone, not just myself. As a result, I’ve seen strangers speak power to their own experiences and share them with strangers. It creates empathy and understanding in what is a hotly contested and divided human rights issue.

"Women’s needs are different across race, age, regions, religion, sexuality, sexual activity, genetics, etc. I could have cross-stitched birth control pills and infused my experience in the art, but that would box out others."

How do you feel applying a traditional craft enhances the artwork you create? Is embroidery a feminist statement for you?

Anything can contain a feminist statement. However in all my work, I’m really compelled to modernize social practices that continue to perpetuate obsolete and biased gender roles. Embroidery certainly has a long history of pushing motherhood and domesticity on women, and limits their interests to passive and feminine subjects. This is important, because in my research, I’ve discovered that social tradition can severely impact the civil rights of women. Young Colonial girls learned how to stitch samplers in school so they could learn to be productive wives and mothers for men. The samplers presented social sanctioned values, religious beliefs, and rudimentary knowledge—values of what it meant to be a women, a wife, and a mother. However, it excluded the physicality of those roles, which are essential to those identities. My stitching health and family products are my attempt to fix that omission, and to hopefully modernize the practice itself. Had embroidery and other social traditions, honestly, depicted what life is like as a woman, perhaps women would not be fighting for the right to control their body today. Embroidery is also a wholly corporal artistic practice, which I think enhances the message of my likewise corporal subject.

What do you think is lacking from mainstream depictions of female sexuality?

 I think we see a lot of overt displays of sexuality or the absence of it. I’d like to see more of a middle ground. This would provide a more comprehensive and diverse perspective of women’s sexuality. It’s also important to highlight demographically diverse artists because everyone’s understanding and perspective is different and just as important as the next.

Hi Indira. As curator of the show, what does the concept of a hotel mean to you?

Who hasn’t imagined when they arrive in a hotel room what other guests have done in the same room before them?  I wanted to explore through this exhibit the private scenarios that women experience while staying in hotels. Hotel rooms have a mysterious and transient component that is very particular, with a flow of many different people who sleep in the same bed and hang out in the room doing different things…  They may be a couple of lovers on a naughty weekend, a sex worker with a client, a drifter passing through, a group looking to continue the party after the local bar has shut, or a woman on her own, perhaps looking for love in strange places…  the options are endless! One can imagine anything can and has taken place… it may be mundane, erotic or very dark and dangerous. That endless mystery of what may have taken place in your hotel room is captivating and I wanted to explore that idea in depth with this installation and exhibition, through the experiences specifically of women staying in hotels, and the intimacy and private moments that take place behind closed doors.

"One can imagine anything can and has taken place in a hotel room… it may be mundane, erotic or very dark and dangerous."

What common theme do you recognize in the works featured at (HOTEL) XX?

(Hotel) XX is an immersive installation of a hotel which creates the framework for an exhibition of over 20 female artists exploring themes of intimacy, fear and fantasy. I was inspired by the idea a hotel where one could experience vicariously through the artwork the history of the guests that have stayed in the rooms, as if their memories and dreams were left as visual momentos. I decided to focus on the experiences of female guests (thus the “xx” in the title as a reference to female chromosomes) to emphasize the female gaze and women’s experiences in intimate places. When entering the room, each work is its own time capsule of experiences. A lot of artists explored romantic and erotic scenarios, while others touched on themes of violence or the mundane. Every component of the installation is a work of art, including the furniture, the accessories lying about such as cameras and cigarettes (many of which are porcelain sculptures), the lights (which are for example table lamps made of neon) and the rug, which is a dye-sublimation photo printed on a carpet.

Your own work in the show features photographs of sex workers. What stereotypes or assumptions surrounding sex workers were subverted during the process of making those pieces?

I think a lot of sex workers are stereotyped physically as having a certain “look” which can often be considered rather vulgar. The typical prostitute featured in films is usually easily identifiable by wearing a lot of heavy makeup, perhaps badly dyed hair and fake everything else… In reality these days many sex workers are college girls, making money to pay for their tuition, or the girl next door, who books clients through social media and her iPhone app. The series I have at SPRING/BREAK features portraits of a well known dominatrix, model, artist and self proclaimed “sex worker”.  I think the images speak for themselves as far as breaking the stereotype of what a “dominatrix” or “sex worker” looks like.

Hi Myla. Thankfully, femininity is a multi-faceted concept in contemporary art, which elements of being female does your art appeal to?

My work generally addresses women and their relationship with their bodies. I try to find ways to honor the female body, and encourage a degree of honesty and acceptance among women who participate in my work, or consume it.

Is it important for you to identify personally with the themes in your art work?

That is the only way I can produce the work! I need to feel a connection to what I’m making and the people I’m working with. I think that creates the best product.

"I would like to encourage women to know that their pleasure needs to be prioritized, and they are not simply tools or objects to be used in male fantasies."

What do you think is lacking from mainstream depictions of female sexuality?

The spectrum of female sexuality is quite grand, and we often see only a sliver of this depicted in mainstream culture, largely produced through a male’s perspective. We need to see more sex positive women taking charge of what happens within their sex lives, and being proactive in asking for what they want. I would like to encourage women to know that their pleasure needs to be prioritized, and they are not simply tools or objects to be used in male fantasies.

Your piece at (HOTEL) XX pairs the female body with space shuttles in flight. What is the connection between them in the piece?

These images are where female sexuality meets the landscape.  The subjects become larger than life; like giants. I am merging the scale of the human body with immense industrial markers and architectural feats, in this case, The Shuttle Endeavor.  The female body and sexuality take center stage, And I try to collage an overpowering and swallowing scale of these grand engineered structures, or rockets invoking stages of action, spaces of political and sexual movement.

"Female sexuality and power are so complicated and interesting - and there remains such a lack of mixing pleasure, sexuality, politics, and activism."

As an artist is your approach to the female body and femininity instinctive? Or more conscious?

Initially, I think my approach was very instinctive, I have always been attracted and seduced by giant structures of power, their immensity, complexity and beauty at odds,  with their overwhelming presence. As a child I was fascinated by the images of naked women in Oui and Penthouse magazines that I would secretly look at, unaware of the power of the ‘male gaze’. I started off using these same images to assert my own ‘female gaze’ into the picture, fusing these retro female bodies and massive power structures with intentions of empowerment.  Now it’s very deliberate, there is an aesthetic strategy that shows both the visual power of engineered structures, space exploration, and sexual ecstasy at the same time attempting to critique it. The bodies of women (some of which I photograph my self) are used to pose deep and difficult questions about the history and nature of power within our western culture. They have transformed in my work from representing symbols of male power in opposition to the female body to being the metaphor of the body itself.

What do you think is lacking from mainstream depictions of female sexuality?

It’s 2018 and the mainstream continues to leave out this gigantic spectrum of voices in our Contemporary American Society. Mainstream depictions are still so simplified and “dumbed down”. Female sexuality and power are so complicated and interesting – and there remains such a lack of mixing pleasure, sexuality, politics, and activism. I deeply believe the world is experiencing the emergence of a collective “shadow” more than ever before. 

In response, there is starting to be what I have named “the aesthetics of a new movement “ these multidisciplinary optics are more inclusive, diverse and unafraid of the contradictions of sexualized bodies. I think the underrepresented have given up on waiting for mainstream representation & we are now doing it for ourselves. 

This future feminism is in the midst of creating alternative frames of reference with a new perspective, in hopes of a more open and regenerated kind of perception and rethinking of feminist and queer aesthetic intervention.