My second final piece

For my second final piece, I changed my mind many times on how to capture the myth of Vagina Dentata, inspired from the art piece I saw in Prague and the film Teeth, that highlights rape culture and women fighting back with the very thing that makes them seen as weak in society. There were so many possibilities on how to create something to symbolise the myth that it caused me to change my mind while actually creating the piece. I first of all thought that I was going to create a flower sculpture out of clay, but mid-way in creating the clay sculpture, I realised that this wasn’t capturing it as realistically as I wanted the piece to. Therefore, I decided to sketch out possibilities;

I even planned on making cupcakes with vagina-looking toppings and teeth inside, but decided to stick with the vagina sculpture instead. I believe that I made the right decision because it turned out just as I wanted it to, and captures my inspirations for creating this piece very well. I painted the vagina pink and red, symbolising flowers and roses, which sort of links to my first idea. The teeth inside has fake blood all over them, creating the idea of women fighting back against rape culture. Here are images of the piece while I was creating it;

And here’s the finished final piece;

I made the vagina look imperfect and even made the teeth gappy and look irregular to highlight the extreme measures women go to to have the ‘perfect’ body, even getting their labia trimmed, when having ‘imperfect’ bodies are perfectly normal. I decided to make it a dark pink, which resembles an actual vagina, but also fits into femininity and flowers which is something I’ve been using a lot during the year for the Inside/ Outside project. I do believe that is resembles a flower, which is what I originally planned to make, but the cracks and ridges of the clay definitely looks better on a sculpture of a vagina, as it creates a more realistic look to it.