NASTASIA MEYRAT

There is one painting by Nastasia Meyrat that I find to be particularly revealing about the concerns that have recently occupied the artist. It depicts two pink orchids, with their corollas in bloom turned towards to viewer. However, one could also see two vulvas or mouths in them, their petals being sinuously arranged as the flashy folds and depths of vaginal orifices or oral cavities. Now, the analogy with mouths and female genitalia has been ubiquitous in art, literature, folklore, and mythology since the dawn of times, symbolically charging sets of cultural practices, such as that of offering flowers as a present to a beloved one. But what about the parallel between mouths and vulvas, which the painting seems to establish by some sort of transitive property?... The correlation already exists, if latent, in scientific jargon, for, anatomically speaking, vulvas have labiae, that is, "lips." Yet, this coincidence rests on a darker sociocultural stratification. Throughout history,..