GODOG Venus, Shrines, and the Height of Love

O D 0 Venus Shrines and the

Height of Love

Fawn Rogers

Fawn Rogers, Pussy Buddha 2019

"My definition of feminism is the simplest one. It’s the idea that a work of art could portray the power, independence, quality, dignity, and identity of women. They should be timeless, and they should be qualities that belong for all women for all time."

Mary Beckinsale

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In both real and imagined histories, the concept of palimpsest reflects the evolution, erosion, erasure, stratification and reinvention of societal and material formations. Arguably most compellingly in the history of art, the female form exemplifies this palimpsest: deified and objectified, elevated and denigrated, at once transformed and transformative. Playfully coalescing the divine and the banal, GODOG re-envisions sex, power, and the representation of the female form.

From the earliest sculptures to contemporary works in an array of media, the ‘Venus’ figure has informed human art for millennia.

The earliest undisputed depiction of a human being, the Venus of Hohlen Fels, was crafted from the tusk of a woolly mammoth c. 36,000 BCE. Venus figures have been recovered both in caves and open-air locations, sacred and ceremonial locales, as well as burial places throughout the world. Symbolizing fertility, sensual pleasure, creation, ritual, and death.

Throughout art history, female representation runs from shame to worship. Portrayed with conflicting roles as in Mary Magdalene the saint or whore, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Bust of Constanza Bonarelli.

Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde painting was regarded as blasphemous upon its inception, portrays the vagina as the anatomical and material origin of human life, and underscores the fraught and multifaceted historical relationship to female sexuality and the male gaze. The resurgence of goddess cults in the late 20th century and the significant re-envisioning of the Venus motif in works such as the Met’s Facade Commission of Wangechi Mutu, Salvador Dali’s Venus with Drawers, Jeff Koons’ Balloon Venus, Takashi Murakami’s Miss Ko2, Louise Bourgeois’ Nature Study, and Sarah Lucas’ Random Mother and Nice Tits. These works exemplify the refracted notions of subject and object, representation and volition with regard to the female form.

In the GODOG family, Pussy Buddha, Angel and Hello among others, viscerally engage with this legacy, tracing transhistorical resonances both aesthetically and thematically. The reimagined Venus figures are at once subject and object, goddess and plaything, both idol and provocateur. This coterie of figures embodies a diverse array of gender and post-gender ideals. A lounging male figure captures the sensual languor of the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, considered by the Romans to represent the height of love. An angel with two faces displays both masculine and feminine elements. Conjuring the fetish objects of ancient worship rites, two phallus-headed figures subsist in dialogue with the Pussy Buddha. Her configuration, unapologetically featuring her genitalia as countenance, recalls the oyster, who’s self-contained genderfluidity resists hierarchical and binary gender structures.

Unflinchingly engaged with both material and conceptual evolution, GODOG offers a current, historically situated yet forward-looking approach to pleasure, transformation, and transcendence.

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Fawn Rogers, GODOG, 2020 photo credit M.Costantini

THE PUSSY BUDDHA Rooted in an historical legacy of anthropomorphic female sculpture, extending from the Upper Paleolithic Age to the present day, the Pussy Buddha both engages with and subverts this legacy with radical implications for sexual representation. Each figure is, in essence, a Venus figure, a nude statuesque goddess, yet defined by a notable departure from tradition: the pussy is prominently displayed on the face.

Historically, the term ‘pussy’ dates back to the 1500s, initially as a term of endearment. The expression was eventually vulgarized during the 1800s, which also hosted the ascent of Victorian morality, colonialism, and industrialization. The Pussy Buddha reflects a consciousness of these ramifications, not strictly as an emblem of reclamation, but as a kind of real-time artifact, an anachronistic relic created for the purpose of future discovery.

Select GODOG figures are sculpted from Pietra di Luserna, a sedimentary stone from the Cottian Alps of northwestern Italy. The stone belongs to the Lower Permian Age (c. 299–252 million years ago), an era triggered by the end of the Carboniferous Period, named for the prolific coal beds formed during this time, and concluding with the Permian-Triassic Event, the world’s most devastating mass extinction. In this dynamic,

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the work shares a grounding with other elements of Rogers’ practice, such as the extinction eulogy R.I.P. and The World Is Your Oyster in which the Pussy Buddha also appears. Other materials include bronze, utilize in sculpture since approximately 2500 BCE, and natural clay, a component of such early Venus figurines as the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, c. 26,000 BCE. Exposed in Rogers’ work to environmental factors causing deep cracks and fragmentation, these figures undergo a natural yet expedited aging process, ultimately coming to resemble the very earth from which the clay was originally extracted.

Ensconced in these material choices is the notion of palimpsest, a layering of both material and ideological structures. The GODOG series is informed by the burying and unearthing of cultures and ideas. In contraposition to the enshrinement and fetishism of the traditional Venus motif, the Pussy Buddha appears de-shrined, more imposing than life-sized, unapologetic and decisively unmoored from a heritage of shame and repression. Inspired by artists’ work such as the Japanese shunga ukiyo-e woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada Hatsune Shunshoku dar ume, Marcel Duchamp’s Wedge of Chastity, Louise Bourgeois’ Maman, Tracey Emin’s The Dark Hole, George Condo’s Figures in a Garden, Dan Finsel’s untitled sculptures (2019), Juliana Notari's sculpture Diva, Anish Kapoor’s Hysterical Sexual, and Betty Tompkins’ Sex Works.

The Pussy Buddha’s posture further acknowledges, yet undermines, the historical depiction of the female. In her seated pose, one hand is positioned on her lap and the other is gently extended in a calm, confident posture suggesting the embodiment of tolerance. In a secondary posture, she appears bent at the waist, looking out from between her spread legs toward the viewer. Termed the ‘hello’ posture, the impression is of playfulness made all the more jarring by the anatomical particularities of the sculpture.

The notion of genitalia-as-countenance might be read as the logical conclusion of the history of female objectification, but it is also, at its core, an intrinsically and quintessentially feminine symbol of power and origin of life. Likewise, The World Your Oyster video and paintings examine the exploitation and worship of the subject/object. As the Pussy Buddha attests, idolatry and denigration are not opposites, but obverse sides of the same proverbial coin. There is arguably no more salient symbol of this duality than the Venus sculpture, at once a standard of power and subjugation, fetishization and empowerment.

Past, future and an extraordinarily fraught present. Amanda Miller Louise Bourgeois, Nature Study, 1997 7

Fawn Rogers,GODOG sculptures, 2020

Intentionally exposed to time and the natural elements, this selection of clay sculptures appears partway through the process of deterioration, mirroring transformation and destruction.

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Bruce Nauman, Seven Figures, 1985, neon

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"I wanted to create a very gender-fluid, humanity-inclusive family of Venus sculptures. Future artifacts in the present. Imagining a less repressed species and what the social ramifications could be." Fawn Rogers

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The Dancing Girl, Mohenjo-Daro, (c. 2500-1750 BCE)

Bronze A material associated with both creation and weaponization, bronze has been utilized as a sculptural medium since 2500 BCE. The process of lost-wax casting predates the Bronze Age, with a variety of metal applications dating back to roughly 6000 BCE in the Indus River Valley (present-day Pakistan).

Bronze enjoyed special favor among Greco-Roman artists and during the Renaissance, and again during the Industrial Revolution. The medium of bronze is utilized less and less in contemporary sculpture, which often favors such media as plaster, fiberglass and material iterations of 3D-printing.

This historical anachronism defines one of the material aspects of sculptures such as those from the GODOG series.

Widely held to represent the earliest known instance of anthropomorphic bronze sculpture, The Dancing Girl was recovered in Mohenjo-Daro, in present-day Pakistan, in 1926. Heavily adorned, she appears in the nude, positioned in a naturalistic, confident stance.

A significant example of prehistoric bronze lost-wax casting, The Dancing Girl was described by British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who regarded the sculpture as “a girl perfectly confident of herself and the world."

15 Marcel Duchamp, Wedge of Chastity, 1954 15

"The depth of geological time is beyond comprehension."

Fawn Rogers

Luserna Stone (Pietra di Luserna), Lower Permian Age, c. 299–252 million years ago

Sedimentary Stone The Pussy Buddha is made from Pietra di Luserna, a sedimentary stone from the Cottian Alps of northwestern Italy. This stone was formed in the wake of the Carboniferous Period, prior to the world’s most cataclysmic instance of extinction, the Permian-Triassic Event, considered the third of the six great extinctions. It's made of layers of the remains of dead plants and animals; coral, algae, clams, brachiopods, mastodons and dinosaurs. Mined since the Middle Ages, it has been extensively utilized in construction and more rarely in contemporary sculpture. Its multilayered history of architectural and artistic applications has led to its designation as a Global Heritage Stone and its formative recognition as a signifier of palimpsest.

The Six Mass Extinctions: Ordivician-Silurian extinction — 444 million years ago Late Devonian extinction — 383-359 million years ago Permian-Triassic extinction — 299-252 million years ago Triassic-Jurassic extinction — 201 million years ago Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction — 66 million years ago Extinction today — Anthropocene Fawn Rogers, Sedimentary Stone, Pussy Buddha 2020

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R.I.P, Fawn Rogers, 2015, bronze, board wenge, 19white oak

rest in peace

The game of chess, originally conceived during the 6th century C.E., has survived and evolved for nearly 1500 years, an enduring artifact of strategy, competition, and domination. The game of chess has long been admired as a bastion of logic and order, but it is, at its core, a game of war, predicated on machinations of violence and obliteration. Capturing this irony as an emblem of the Anthropocene, Rogers’s re-envisioning of the game in R.I.P. (Rest In Peace) the chessman are depicted as sculptures of six animals recently extinct. Positioned on an oversized, chess board made of wenge and white oak, the pieces depict the extinct animals cast in solid bronze, one set is sand-blasted and the other in a black patina. The animals are presented with regal dignity and personality. Each sculpture has material weight and nobility.

Considered the first casualty of Anthropocene expansion, the Great Auk appears as the bishop. The last known egg of the species was destroyed in 1844, crushed underfoot by Icelandic sailors in their rush to capture its parents. The Pyrenean Ibex, the knight, extinct by 2000 was cloned in 2003, an incarnation that lived for only a few minutes. A small army of intently forward-looking frogs serve as pawns and in a reference to the extinction of half the world’s amphibians, comprise half the pieces on the board. The West African Black Rhinoceros, poached to extinction for its horn believed to be an aphrodisiac, stands as the rook. A majestic Cape Lioness, her expression bent in a defiant and cranky snarl, appears as the queen. The Mexican Brown Bear, following the extinction of six other bear species, was decimated by farmers who considered them a pest, serves as the king.

Chess is a game of triumph, but triumph is a corollary of conquest. It is, notably, a game the Buddha refused to play. The game’s colonial history—traceable from ancient India to the Muslim world to imperial civilizations in Europe and northern Asia—coupled with an emphasis on dominance, finds fresh implications in the contemporary subjugation of the natural world. Even the historical styles of chess—Romantic, Scientific, Hypermodern, and New Dynamism—alludes to shifting cultural values and power structures, concluding, perhaps, with the game’s association with technology and artificial intelligence.

Chess has long held a place of fascination for artists, Matisse, Man Ray, Duchamp, Paul Klee, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, have all engaged with the game of chess. Jake and Dinos Chapman in their 2003, Chess Set, give resonant form to pre-adolescent male obsessions with fantasy forms of conflict, violence and mutation. Chess players themselves, the brothers see the game as an intersection of warfare and play, linked to the fears and anxieties of childhood.

Engaging in this legacy, Rogers repurposes a familiar form to uniquely compelling ends. In its prescient entanglements of order and chaos, civility and savagery, R.I.P. presses past a playful exploration of anthro-ecological history and evades purely dogmatic, observational, or elegiac orientations. The viewer becomes a player, autonomous yet complicit: a participant in the Anthropocene, at once a witness and contributor to a legacy of humanity, immortalization, and extinction. Claudia Grigg Edo 21

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Corleck Head, Ireland, c. 1st-2nd century CE

Anthropomorphic sculptures with multiple faces date back millennia. A notable example is the Corleck Head, believed to have been inspired by a pagan fertility god. The primitive sculpture partly inspired the angel in the GODOG series. It is redolent of the dual-faced Hermaphroditus, considered to symbolically represent the height of love.

Image from Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2019 Left image: sculpture study for GODOG, 2019

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Claude Cahun (Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob), Self Portrait, 1929

Two gender-fluid icons who inspired the GODOG series are Claude Cahun and Herculine Barbin. Assigned female at birth, Herculine was initially raised as a female and brought up in a convent, but eventually came to be acknowledged as a significant figure in the intersex community. Their memoir was studied by Michel Foucault, who described Herculine's gender identity as a "happy limbo of a non-identity." However, Herculine perceived themself as persecuted, disinherited, and subject to "a ridiculous inquisition." The Intersex Day of Remembrance, also known as Intersex Solidarity Day, is observed on November 8, the birthday of Herculine Barbin (1838-1868).

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Sketch from Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2019

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Fawn Rogers, wax, GODOG (Angel) bronze commission, 2020

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Venus of Berekhat Ram, Golan Heights, 230,000 -700,000 BCE

Discovered by Dr. Naama Goren-Inbar in 1981, the Venus of Berekhat Ram is considered to be an example of the feminine ideal during the Paleolithic Age. It is crafted from modified pebble, with deep grooves emulating the female body.

Because it was recovered from between two layers of ash, it was able to be dated using tephrochronology, revealing an age of at least 230,000 years. If verifiably intended to replicate a female figure, the artifact would be the earliest example of representational art in the archaeological record.

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Venus of Hohlen Fels, Schelklingen, Germany, c. 36,000 BCE

Exemplified by the Venus of Hohlen Fels, Venus figures are not only among the oldest artworks to be discovered anywhere on earth, but are also among the earliest indicators of prehistoric cultural practices and ideals.

More than a hundred Venus figures have been recovered, ranging from minuscule charms to significantly larger figures, and more are steadily being unearthed.

Venuses were often positioned in sacred places and in individuals’ homes as symbols of fertility, abundance, and a source of life.

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Fawn Rogers, collage with Venus of Hohlen Fels, apple with Victorian coffin nails, and Nail Shrines, 2020

Traditionally, Venus figurines have often been associated with the locus of the shrine. Rogers's series of sculptures, constructed from earthen materials solidified in the form of mixed metals punctured with nails— a potent historical symbol of both creation and destruction, points toward the shrine's symbolic conflation of confinement and divinity.

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Venus the Adorant: The Worshipper, Geißenklösterle Cave, Germany, c. 36,000–35,000 BCE

As pictured above, the ivory of woolly mammoth tusks was utilized as a sculptural material during the Paleolithic Age. This Venus statuette, recovered near Blaubeuren, Germany in 1979, was named ‘the adorant’ for the depicted figure’s body posture, interpreted as a gesture of worship.

Venus of Willendorf, Willendorf, Austria, c. 30,000–25,000 BCE

A significant icon of prehistoric art, the Venus of Willendorf embodies the robust aesthetics tendencies of the period.

It is carved from oolitic limestone and accentuated with red ochre pigmentation. Sculptural depictions of nude female bodies with exaggerated sexual features indicate an early fertility fetish, perhaps represented here in the form of 39 a mother goddess.

Venus of Dolní Věstonice (Věstonická venuše), Moravia, c. 29,000–25,000 BCE

The Venus of Dolní Věstonice was recovered in the Moravian basin south of Brno, Czech Republic in 1925. This ceramic figurine, along with others retrieved from locations in the same region, comprise the oldest known ceramic articles in the world.

Venus figurine of Balzi Rossi, Italy, c. 30,000–20,000 BCE

This carved anthropomorphic lithic sculpture represents a naked female form with exaggerated physical features.

The profile of the head indicates the human stage Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

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Venus of Savignano, Modena, Italy, c. 40,000–20,000 BCE

Inadvertently recovered near Savignano sul Panaro in the province of Modena, Italy during a construction project in 1925, this greenstone anthropomorphic lithic sculpture dates back to the Upper Paleolithic Age, and represents the most famous of the Italian Venuses from this era.

For over 70 years, it was attributed to the Aurignacian archaeological industry (c. 40,000–30,000 BCE), though scholars now attribute it to the Gravettian archaeological industry (c. 30,000–20,000 BCE). The neck and shoulder seem to suggest a Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

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Venus of Sireuil, Roc de Cazelle, Dordogne, France, c. 25,000 BCE

Carved from amber calcite during the Paleolithic Age, the Venus of Sireuil displays the voluptuous, exaggerated features for which Paleolithic Venus figurines are known.

Image from Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2018

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Venus of Dordogne, Dordogne, France, c. 23,000 BCE

Recovered in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, the Venus of Dordogne exemplifies the overtly sexual characteristics of many Venus sculptures from the period.

The horn depicted most likely represents a male fertility symbol, aesthetically reminiscent of the more contemporary cornucopia or ‘horn of plenty.’ The sculpture is carved in limestone, a sedimentary rock of the region.

Venus of Lespugue, France, c. 26,000–24,000 BCE

Approximately six inches (150 mm) in height, this Venus figure was carved from woolly mammoth ivory tusk.

Discovered in the foothills of the Pyrenees in 1922, it was unfortunately damaged during the excavation process, as indicated in the images above. The depiction of a clothing element is considered by some scholars to indicate the earliest example of the representation of spun thread.

Balloon Venus, Jeff Koons, 2008

Emblemizing the same predilections as the paleolithic goddess figurines, Koons’ Balloon Venus highlights exaggerated female features.

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Hal Saflieni, The Sleeping Lady figurine, Malta, c. 4000-2500 BCE

The traces of red ochre paint found on this figurine are thought to indicate the subject’s identity as a ‘mother goddess,’ though the figure may also be intended as a representation of death or eternal sleep.

Il-Mara l-Hoxna (The Fat Lady), Malta, 3150 BCE

Fat Lady Goddess figurine, Siberia, Russia, c. 18,000 BCE

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Hypogeum of Malta, or Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, c. 4000 BCE

The Sleeping Lady figurine was recovered at the Hypogeum of Malta, a massive subterranean structure dating to the Saflieni phase of the Neolithic Age. A site of tremendous cultural value, the structure contains three levels, including multiple shrines and an oracle chamber.

Ggantija Temple, Gozo, Malta, c. 3600 BCE

Predating the construction of Stonehenge and the pyramids in ancient Egypt, the Ġgantija shrines represent the earliest iteration of the Megalithic Temples of Malta, and are widely held to comprise the oldest freestanding structure on earth. The shrines are 53 constructed from large-scale limestone sedimentary blocks.

Sculpture of a Maltese Woman, Malta, c. 3,000 BCE

Mnajdra Temples, Qrendi, Malta, c. 3600–3200 BCE

Designated by the UNESCO World Heritage Sites organization as "unique architectural masterpieces,” the Megalithic Temples of Malta contain some of the most significant and well-preserved ancient shrines on earth.

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Fawn Rogers, mixed media, Shrines, 57 2020

Cloverleaf or Trefoil architectural design

The trefoil design, comprised of three adjoining apses in a clover-leaf shape, characterizes the architectural structure of the Megalithic Temples of Malta. The layout of the shrines has been observed by historical and architectural scholars to resemble a womb.

Tarxien Temple sculptures, Malta, c. 3150 BCE

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Fawn Rogers, She Sells Seashells by the Seashore, oil on canvas, 2020

Many mollusks are naturally hermaphroditic or protandric. They embody multiple genders or change gender over the course of their lives. In this sense, they reflect the ancient concept of hermaphroditism as the height of love.

The seashell is an enduring symbol of sensuality, beauty, and the divine.

Hermaphroditic ivory Venus figure of unknown use, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Africa, Bambala, c. 19th century CE

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Fawn Rogers, bronze, Pussy Buddah, 2019 62

Fawn Rogers, oil on canvas, 2020 63

The World64 Is Your Oyster, Fawn Rogers, 2020, oil on canvas

GODOG comission, Fawn Rogers, 65 2020

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Coalescing the visceral and ephemeral, violent and sensual, The World Is Your Oyster offers a provocative meditation on totality, [d]evolution, and the anthropocene. Presented in two-channel video, the work explores various manifestations of the oyster and other mollusks— life, harvest, cultivation, consumption— against a visual/aural dynamic at once discordant and hypnotic.

Contraposing the multi-layered, precious, and luminescent pearl with slicing, shucking, prodding, extraction, and torrents of colorless blood, the project is, like its subject, at once lurid and intimate, vividly organic and exquisitely orchestrated.

In both concept and execution, this work engages with the artist’s GODOG series, most notably the Pussy Buddha. At the onset, she appears both on screen and facing a screen, straddling a patch of shoreline riddled with shells. In this interstitial space between ocean and land, artificiality and nature, she observes the surgical insertion/manipulation of oysters to create pearls. Both voyeur and voyeurized, she mediates between the viewer and image, serving as both spectator and gateway into a profusion of lusciously juxtaposed footage.

Rife with connotations of sensuality, sanctity, and invasion, the oyster has long been associated with the erotic. Works of art from Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus to Steen’s The Oyster Eater portray the oyster as a symbol of lust, pleasure, opulence, and indulgence. Traditionally evocative of the feminine, oysters are naturally protandric, or sequentially hermaphroditic, shifting gender from male to female over the course of their lives. This fluidity underscores a more evolved conceptualization of gender and nature, with nuanced implications for the pearl’s status as a symbol of divinity and transcendence.

Emblemizing purity, fertility, and hidden or sacred knowledge, the commercial pith of the oyster, the pearl, has been harvested and cultivated for millenia. Despite being a symbol of incorruptibility, the pearl’s inception hinges on corruption: the introduction of an irritant into the body of the oyster. This invading object can be organic or inorganic: a parasite, a 68

particle, the oyster’s own eggs, or, as implemented by 12th century pearl farmers, even images of the Buddha. This element of intrusion and the collision of idolatry and industry, mirrors the history of cultivation. Like many aquaculture creatures, the oyster is prized but also habitually compromised for its delicacy.

An image of both sex and death, oysters are both an aphrodisiac and carriers of Vibrio vulnificus, the world’s most deadly seafoood-borne pathogen, killing up to one in five of those afflicted. Holding these elements in tension, The World Is Your Oyster calls to mind the explicit contrast of luxurious excess and bleak commoditization in Mika Rottenberg’s NoNoseKnows, but veers toward implicating the viewer in the pleasure and violence of consumption.

Bookending the Pussy Buddha’s immanence/transcendence, the video concludes with side-by-side footage of a perfect, symmetrically reflected golden pearl and the plunder of the ocean floor. This final juxtaposition recalls Bill Viola’s Nantes Triptych, in which birth and death are laterally positioned, mediated by a suspended, floating human in an interstitial void. Here, likewise, the viewer of The World Is Your Oyster finds herself: suspended between perfection and annihilation, creation and destruction.

As conflictual as it is compelling, The World Is Your Oyster is ultimately a work of excision, at once violating and seductive, ravishing in all senses, all-consuming and offered up for consumption. At the center of these contradictions, the viewer is present as a literal embodiment of the anthropocentric. Whether transfixed, revulsed, or seduced, the viewer’s experience is inevitably one of implication, engagement, and complicity. The world is, after all, your oyster. A. J. Bermudez

Fawn Rogers, The World is Your Oyster, 2020

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As exemplified in Helmut Newton’s Sex and Landscapes, the eroticism and deification of the female body found a host of new expressions in the medium of photography. From life-sized, high contrast nudes to aesthetic expressions of BDSM culture as fashion, such images are imbued with glamor, voyeurism, and the ironies of idolatry/objectification in historical perceptions of the female form.

Helmut Newton, Destruction of Big Nude IV, 2000

Image from Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2019

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Baroque Period anatomical wax model Venerina, Demountable Venus, 1780-1782 CE

The Anatomical Venus: sex, wax, god and the ecstatic with its heady mixture of beauty, eroticism and death is very seductive. These life-sized dissectible wax women reclining on velvet cushions with glass eyes, strings of pearls and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair were created in 18th century Florence as the centerpiece of the first truly public science museum. Conceived as a means to teach human anatomy, the Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, nature and mankind, divide between life and death,

body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, entertainment and education. The tradition of lifesized simulacra and preserved beautiful women, the phenomenon of women in glass boxes in fairground displays and ideas of the sublime. In a bizarre convergence of death and beauty, wax models of idealized female human cadavers were created for the purpose of medical research. Centuries prior to the creation of the Demountable Venus, Andreas Vaselius suggested the value of such an operation in 1543. “In order to be interested in the inner workings of the human body, men must be seduced by it.”

The Most Beautiful Pearls Are Black, Fawn Rogers, 2020, oil on canvas

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Tanabatake Venus, ‘big-bottomed dogu’, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, c. 25001500 BCE

Japanese dogu figurines are small sculptures crafted during the Jōmon Period (c. 14,000–400 BCE).

Traditionally wide-hipped and narrow-waisted, these figures are associated the shamanism and fertility rites.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 1839 - 1892

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Fawn Rogers, GODOG (Angel and Playful) bronze commission, 2020

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Pergamon Altar, Bergama, Turkey, c. 2000 BCE

The ancient Greek city of Pergamon (northwest of the modern city of Bergama, Turkey) was a wealthy and powerful city in Aeolis. It was home to the Pergamon Altar, a remarkably well preserved architectural structure and cultural site. The base of the altar features a frieze in high relief, depicting the mythological battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods. Notably, measurements of the altar always result in prime numbers. The sequences have been interpreted as East, symbolizing the Olympians; West, the gods and goddesses 80

of earth and water; South, the celestial and light deities; and North, the gods and goddesses of constellations and night. The Pergamon Altar frieze is comprised of 100 individual figures.

Of these, 28 are animals, 59 are giants, 20 are gods, and 34 are goddesses. In their defeat of the giants, the goddesses are depicted warlike and triumphant, with a degree of strength indistinguishable from their male counterparts. They appear as confident, composed, and physically competent, demonstrating an ease of power and grace in their slaughter of the giants.

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"Burney Relief," Mesopotamian relief sculpute, 19th–18th century BCE

Carved from the surrounding clay, this ancient sculpture may feature the goddess Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of sex and war, or Ereshkigal, her sister. The aesthetics and posture of this figure suggest pride, power, and divinity.

The ancient Mesopotamian pantheon included a number of potent female demons and goddesses, of which Ishtar, originally worshipped in Sumer under the name Inanna, is a prominent example.

Minoan Snake Goddess, Crete, Greece, 1600 BCE

Figurines such as these Minoan snake goddess figures were found exclusively in house sanctuaries, and were likely related to the paleolithic traditions regarding women and domesticity.

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Apulian Red Figure (Gnathia vase) Apulia, c. 340 B.C.

This ancient vase painting is considered to be one of the earliest depictions of an intersex individual in art.

Valentina Sampaio, Victoria Secret's first openly transgender model

"You are to be pitied more than I, perhaps.

I soar above all your innumerable miseries, partaking of the nature of the angels; for as you have said, my place is not in your narrow sphere. You have the earth, I have boundless space. Enchained here below by the thousand bonds of your gross, material senses, your spirits cannot plunge into that limpid Ocean of the infinite, where, lost for a day upon your arid shores, my soul drinks deep." Herculine Barbin

Fawn Rogers, Bronze Sculpture GODOG Angel and Wing, 2020

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Yves Klein, Victoire de Samothrace, 1962 CE

Yves Klein's Victoire de Samothrace emulated the iconic Winged Victory of Samothrace.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace or The Winged Nike, 200 BCE

One of the most celebrated sculptures on earth, embodying triumph, the Winged Victory of Samothrace has been prominently displayed at the Louvre since 1884. It was once described by H.W. Janson as ‘the greatest masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture,’ and represents one of a small number of major Hellenistic statues surviving in the original, rather 89 than in the form of Roman reproductions.

Alexandros of Antioch, Venus de Milo, c.

130–100 BCE

The epitome of classical ideal with a blend of blend of restraint and sexual suggestion, the Venus de Milo has a history of controversy and adulation in popular culture. The Venus de Milo has appeared in advertisements, TV and films and inspired artists from Miles Davis to Dali. The sculpture is a symbol for beauty, despite being broken and damaged by time. She is both deeply human and a goddess, a combination that makes her majestic and mysterious. She is beautiful in a way that even an untrained eye understands.

Salvador Dali, Venus with Drawers, 1936 CE

As a child, Salvador Dalí had made a terracotta copy of the Venus de Milo and recalled “My first experience as a sculptor gave me an unknown and delicious erotic joy.” Later in Venus with Drawers, Dalí created a half-sized plaster reproduction of the Venus de Milo in which he cut six drawers each with ermine pompoms. By perforating the famous Venus, Dalí engages in two of his favorite practices – the defacement of a classic symbol and the contrasting of the animate and inanimate.

Dalí was inspired by Freud’s psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams. The drawers may represent areas of our unconscious which only psychoanalysis is able to open. Referring to the meaning behind the open drawers Dalí stated, “They illustrate a certain complacency in smelling the narcissistic orders emanating from each of our drawers.”

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Fawn Rogers, oil on canvas, The World Is Your Oyster, 2020 / oil on canvas, Room With A View, and mixed media sculpture, GODOG, 2020 93

94 bronze, GODOG Angel commisssion, 2020 Fawn Rogers,

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“The frescoes lead you through the terror of initiation to enjoyment, knowledge of ecstasy and shame, but not of guilt. It shows a work that deals with reality, representation, reason and experience, being and nonbeing. It shows that the real is neither rational nor is it truth, and that reality as perceived by our senses deceive us and drives us out of our senses.”

Mary Beckinsale

Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii, Italy, 100 CE

Buried during the eruption of Vesuvius, the Villa of Mysteries was unearthed during the 20th century and discovered to be remarkably well preserved. It has gained particular fame for an exquisite series of frescoes, interpreted to depict a young woman’s initiation into a Dionysian mystery cult.

In the image above, Dominia is pictured on the left, presiding as the matron of rituals. Her etymological association with the term dominatrix emphasizes the ritual depiction of pleasure, pain, and the unveiling of the phallus.

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Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii, Italy, 100 CE

Fascinae sculpture and figures, Rome, c. 120-390 CE

The divine nature of the phallus is captured in a number of fascinus figures. In ancient Rome, these served as household objects of blessing and as wearable charms in honor of the god Fascinus, the deity of masculine power.

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Ermafrodito, Naples, National Archaeological Museum, white marble, Pompeii, 100 CE

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Lingham

A Hindu symbol of fertility, the lingham represents the goddess Shiva as a force of creativity, regeneration, and all-encompassing existence.

In the Shaivistic tradition, the lingham traditionally comprises a short cylindrical pillar made of metal, stone, wood, gems, clay, or other natural materials. Recurring as a votary aniconic object in Hindu religious practice, the lingham appears in the sancta of Shiva temples and shrines as an 'emblem of generative power' It is often located within a lipped, disk like structure called the yoni, emblemizing the goddess Shakti. Together, these objects indicate the unification of feminine and masculine elements, symbolizing 'the totality of all existence.'

"Life / death, the circular reflective. We begin to understand a little of what we’re doing, and it’s over. With these forms, using earth to make them speak. Enjoying the process of building and allowing things to fall apart. Transient, like a Tibetan mandala, but without the prayer.

With underlying sexuality and hidden agendas, whether perverse, innocent or anything in between— everyone has a deep sexuality. These forms are about the love I want to give to the world." Fawn Rogers

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Fawn Rogers, GODOG, 2020

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Joel Peter Witkin, The Birth of Venus, 1982

The original painting The Birth of Venus was created as a work of pleasure for the Medici. The Birth of Venus notably portrays the feminine form as an object of beauty subject to an expressly male vision. She stands atop an open seashell, itself an enduring symbol of fertility, divinity, and rebirth.

David LaChapelle, Rebirth of (Botticelli’s) Venus, 2009

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Fawn Rogers, Homage to Bosch, 2020

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"A reimagining of how the world could be.

Imagining a less repressed sexuality and what the social development of that could be. We are viewed as our sex. GODOG is absence of shame, there is no hiding. The gender fluid GODOG family is broken, playful, arrogant and harmonious."

Fawn Rogers

Fawn Rogers, portrait with the GODOG Angel, 2020

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Fawn Rogers, oil on canvas, Poisonous Harmony, 2020 (96x216")

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In a bold fertile comingling of poison and pleasure Poisonous Harmony offers a sprawling vision of life and death, sex and danger, a current day paradoxical paradisiacal garden. Conceived and executed under the condition of the 2020 worldwide pandemic, the work is at once fragmentary and cohesive, presenting a rich dynamic of conflict, indulgence, and inexplicable harmony.

The most beautiful things can often kill you. Illustrating this paradigm, human forms are spliced and intercut with a variety of natural forms, all of which are potentially lethal: the poisonous pitohui bird; the amygdalin-laced apricot; the highly toxic yellow dart frog; the aptly named ‘murder hornet’; the fatally urushiol-laden unprocessed cashew nut; the wild mushroom, alternately utilized as medicine, hallucinogen, and poison; the fatally intoxicating buttercup; the intricately patterned, but venomous cone snail; and the oyster, obsessively hoarded during the 1918 influenza epidemic, at once a carrier of the symbolically sacred pearl and the most deadly seafood-borne pathogen on earth. Optically spherical pearls emblemize nature, industry, and a multiplicity of ideals, while the Venetian grotto chair, artfully modeled after the scallop shell, offers a rich symbol of eroding civilizations and the ubiquity of the Anthropocene.

In the arresting landscape between the two grotto chairs, the pearl alternately serves as an absorptive presence, a surface for lounging, a recurring object that appears to have been either delicately placed or casually strewn and hovering above a Venus-like torso in lieu of a head. The span of the painting itself seems to exemplify the interstitial space inhabited by shells, an area that is neither life nor death, ocean nor land: a richly shifting present between varied histories and imagined futures.

The work notably interacts with Rogers’ GODOG series, comprised of sculpture, neon, and video art highlighting diverse identities and the evolution of gender. Figures such as the Hello, provocative Pussy Buddha, a languorous reimagining of the classical Sleeping Hermaphroditus, an androgynous dual-faced angel, and incarnations of phallic fetish figures appear in various states of candor and poise, mourning and bliss, isolation and company.

Aesthetically redolent of the vibrant, imaginative world-building of Hieronymus Bosch, Poisonous Harmony conjures a wonderland of contradictions. Even the dominant color, a reinvention of chrome yellow pigment, a highly toxic favorite of Van Gogh’s, has historically been used to signal both danger and the divine and was once culturally heralded as the color ‘associated with all that was bizarre and queer in art and life.’

Encapsulating a myriad of perceptions, Poisonous Harmony invites the viewer to a world at once Edenic and bewildering, rife with things that fester and flourish, harm and delight, a garden of earthly delights that might very well kill you. Kathy Battista

Poisonous Harmony Head ,Fawn Rogers, 2020

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RP Fawn Rogers, Love Letters to Ruth, 2017 / SPLENDEURS ET MISÈRES Musée d'Orsay Installation view

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Paolo Veronese, Veronica Franco's Portrait,oil on canvas, 1575 CE

This portrait of the famous Venetian poet and courtesan Veronica Franco alludes to an often misinterpreted culture of sexualty and commerce during the Italian Renaissance. Courtesans were characteristically welleducated and worldly, transcending traditional class structures. The lives of courtesans during this period provide fascinating insight into the dynamics of shame and guilt.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Paris, June-July 1907 CE

This painting portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel in Barcelona.

Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear slightly menacing. As Picasso scholar Janie Cohen stated, “These women are looking right at us. And that was what was so outrageous about the painting. It frightened people. It made them angry.” Even in recent years the work has faced controversy for supposedly displaying Picasso’s misogyny, painting these women just to serve the purpose of the male gaze.

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Francesco Hayez, Mary Magdalene as a Hermit, 1833 CE

Francesco Hayez, Orante, 1869

As a result of the pronouncements of Pope Gregory the Great, the two most important women in the Christian tradition became the ever-virgin Mary, and the other, Mary Magdalene, repentant of great sexual sins. In other words, the virgin and the whore, one of the most common and destructive stereotypes ever devised of women.

Hayez painted the solitary Mary Magdalene nude emphasizing her sexuality, under a facade of piety.

The cross, a symbol of penance and redemption, partially slips from her hand while she turns toward a skull resting intimately against her hip.

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Diana has been depicted innocent and violent, dangerous and wise. Houdon's sculpture of Diana's unabashed nudity caused a

scandal. Her naked pubis, considered too realistic, was filled in and flattened in 1829.

From antiquity, Diana has retained her triumphant nudity, whose elegance and distinction inspires respect rather than audacity. (above) Jean-Antoine Houdon, Diana the Huntress, 1790 (left) Anonymous artist, Diana the Huntress,School of Fontainebleau, oil on canvas, c. 1550-60 123 CE

Fawn Rogers, notebook, 2019 collage includes the Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Sleeping Hermaphroditus, Rome, 1620 CE and the Prado Hermaphrodite, Madrid, Spain, 1652 CE

Bernini’s Sleeping Hermaphroditus instantiates an ancient, life-sized marble sculpture atop a realistically sculpted mattress. Influenced by ancient depictions of Venus and other divinely imbued female figures, the sculpture also engages with Hellenistic portrayals of Dionysus, merging feminine and masculine qualities in an embodiment of languor and love, in a posture seemingly free of guilt.

Romans considered the hermaphrotite figure to be sensual, emblemizing the unity of the masculinity and femininity— representing the height of love.

This idealized consummation frequently appeared in sculptural representations, particularly in the setting of gardens during the period.

There is evidence that at times ancient civilizations were more advanced.

Embracing the ambiguities of gender and sexual identity and innate differences is paramount to the harmony of humanity.

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Narcissus, or The Mazarin Hermaphrodite, 3rd century CE

Eva Robins, Intersex Actress, PLAYMEN January 1982

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128 The World Is Your Oyster, Fawn Rogers, 2020, oil on canvas

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AFAB + Agender + Aliagender + AMAB + Androgyne + Androgynous + Aporagender + Asexual + Bigender + Binarism + Body dysphoria + Boi + Butch + Cis + Cisgender + Cis Female + Cis Male + Cis Man + Cis Woman + Cisgender Female + Cisgender Male + Cisgender Man + Cisgender Woman + Cisnormativity + Cissexism + Demiboy + Demigender + Demigirl + Dyadic + Female-to-Male + Feminine-of-center + Feminine-presenting + Femme + FTM + Gender apathetic + Gender binary + Gender dysphoria + Gender expansive + Gender expression + Genderfluid + Gender identity + Gender-neutral pronouns + Gender nonconforming + Gender normative + Gender outlaw + Gender presentation + Genderqueer + Gender questioning + Gender roles + Gender variant + Genderfluid 130

+ Genderfuck + Genderqueer + Graygender + Intergender + Intersex + Male to Female + MTF + Masculineof-center + Masculine-presenting + Maverique + Misgender + Multi-gender + Neither + Neutrois + Nonbinary + Novigender + Null-Gender + Omnigender + Other + Pangender + Polygender + Sex + Sex assigned at birth + Social dysphoria + Soft butch + Stone butch + Third gender + Trans + Trans Female + Trans Male + Trans Man + Trans Person + Trans Woman + Transfeminine + Transgender + Transgender Female + Transgender Male + Transgender Man + Transgender Person + Transgender Woman + Transitioning + Transmasculine + Transsexual + Transsexual Female + Transsexual Male + Transsexual Man + Transsexual Person + Transsexual Woman + Trigender + Two-Spirit 131

Hylocereus undatus, a hermaphroditic plant with both carpels and stamens.

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The Most Beautiful Pearls Are Black, Fawn Rogers, 2021, oil on canvas

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136 The Souls I, 2019 Damien Hirst,

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138 notebook sketch, 2019 Fawn Rogers,

Frida Kahlo, Retrato de Irene Bohus, 1947

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Indya Moore, transgender model, actress and activist

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The World Is Your Oyster series, Fawn Rogers, 2020, oil on canvas 143

Artist Fawn Rogers in Future Suit. "Everyone should try on an alternate sex. The world could be a much better place."

Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2019

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146 Hysterical Sexual, 2016 Anish Kapoor,

147 Dan Finsel, untitled, 2019

148 Fawn Rogers, oil on canvas The World Is Your Oyster, 2020

The World is Your Oyster ‘The world is your oyster’ was often said to young people about to embark on adult life. Originating from Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor, it exists as a phrase of passionate violence directed toward the pursuit of ones desire. In 1918 as the Spanish flu ravaged the world, oyster beds were pillaged and traded on the black market as they were seen to be remedies for the deadly disease. Beginning in 2020 Fawn Rogers revisits these exquisite forms, considering pleasure and pain, nature and industry, fragility and the future.

As inhabitants of the Anthropocene, we each play a role in the sixth extinction. An oyster is paradigmatic of this inevitable destruction and the toll that is taken as humans have become a force of nature. Whether a producer of precious pearls or a gastronomic delicacy, they are expended just the same. The paintings are a form of archiving these creatures, still extant, but currently predicted to disappear in the relatively near future. Further delving into this concept, the works on canvas are scanned into digital assets, which will be packaged for large-scale dissemination in an opensource format in hope to preserve them for our collective memory.

The World is Your Oyster pays homage to these idiosyncratic and complex forms, inviting viewers to consider life, sex, and death simultaneously. While oysters and mollusks are largely considered feminine— (i.e. - Botticelli’s Venus emerging from the shell) this construction of the feminine, from a male perspective, only served as such a device. Ironically, in actuality, the oyster is hermaphroditic, existing between and at times switching genders. Rogers is reforming the image of the oyster in attempt to express the pride a woman could have in her own sexuality. “With underlying sexuality, whether perverse, innocent or anything in-between everyone has a deep sexuality. My work is about the love I want to give to the world.”- FR Rogers’ paintings of various mollusks are rendered in larger than life scale (85 x 65 inches). They are astounding for their technical virtuosity as well as their sublime characteristics. The canvases appear photorealistic from afar but reveal characteristic and painterly touch of their creation as one draws near. In “Under Your Clothes You Are Naked Too” the tension is instilled with the shell ajar, while “Episodic” depicts entrails and organs as blatant sensory prompts of promiscuous thought. One is lured in by the seductive contours of each shell that is depicted by her hand, at times a mussel may appear vaginal, a utilization of visual mechanisms reminiscent of Renate Bertlmann’s phallic appendages, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party Plates, Betty Tompkins anatomical genitalia, or Hannah Wilke’s folded forms. In these paintings Rogers’ exhibits reverence for predecessors, artists such as Marilyn Minter, Megan Marrin, Rona Pondick, Sarah Lucas, and Louise Bourgeois.

In “Happy as a Clam” the deep purple tongue-like form oozes from the interstice of the brackish wet clam’s shell. The candescent orange background affords the work a playful tone, while the oozing slime conjures sensations of compunction. Many of the mollusks in Rogers’ series are set out erotically unincumbered, with one or more luminescent pearls protruding from beneath the flesh. While oysters are commonly considered luxurious rarities forged by nature, like many things, human intervention has subverted the organic process of their creation. The oysters are harvested and pearls cultivated. Adding to the intricately layered narratives of the work is “The Most Beautiful Pearls are Black”, a painting in the series which provides poignant reference to the ongoing era of racial reconciliation our society is facing, Rogers’ addressing her own family’s Cherokee History. Having walked the trail of tears to a reservation in Oklahoma called Cooweescoowee, they worked as cotton pickers, at which point her great grandmother was forced into the reform program where native American children were removed from their families and placed into homes with European settlers. Eventually Rogers’ grandmother made her way to the Oregon coast where Oysters are harvested and Rogers’ spent time digging for clams barefoot in the tides and collecting shells that once housed life. Kathy Battista

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"My whole life is controversy, but Love has no boundaries..."

Andrej Pejic

Transgender model Andreja Pejic

Fawn Rogers, oil on canvas The World Is Your Oyster, 2020 151

Geena Rocero transgender advocate, model and founder of Gender Proud

Jason DeCaires Taylor, Reclamation, Museo Subacuático de Arte, 2009

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Electric Oyster, Fawn Rogers, 2021, oil 155 on canvas

156 oil on canvas, 2020 Fawn Rogers,

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This is a work that speaks to female identity. It is considered to be the first great portrait of a woman and among the most personal of Bernini's works. The bust of Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli represents a significant departure from much of the more aloof and objectifying female representations of the era.

The depth and detail of the work reflects not only the subject’s beauty, but also her agency and intellect.

The bust, in rare pink marble, is fully carved all the way around, unlike most sculptures of the period, which were typically left unfinished in the back due to the extensive time and effort required.

In a fit of jealousy Bernini had Costanza assaulted, leading to a deep scar on the side of her face. The Pope, Urban VII— the one that condemned Galileo and also condemned sneezing because he said it was too close to the sexual act— intervened advising Bernini to get married, but imprisoned Costanza for adultery. Considered by some historians to have been a common painter’s prostitute, Costanza Bonarelli was in fact a highly regarded art collector and dealer.

Descended from the prominent Piccolomini family.

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Bust of Constanza Bonarelli, Florence, Italy, 1630 CE

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161 Kara Walker, A Subtlety, 2014

162 comission from GODOG series, Fawn Rogers, 2020, bronze Pussy Buddha

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165 Your Perfect Plastic Heart, Fawn Rogers, oil on canvas, 2020

Amedeo Modigliani, Venus (standing nude), 1917 CE

In concert with the sexual implications of the Expressionist movement, Modigliani’s Venus presents a decisive challenge to the classic Venus motif.

Gaston Lachaise, Standing Woman, 1932 CE

Lachaise’s proud, muscular incarnation of the female form challenges traditional notions of masculine and feminine aesthetics.

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Francisco Goya, La Maja Desnuda, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain, c. 1797–1800 CE

Blurring the lines between objectification and idolatry, and arguably challenging conceptions of eroticism and shame, Goya’s La Maja Desnuda depicts a peasant girl in identical postures, both obscured and revealed.

Gustave Courbet, L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), 1866 CE

Regarded as blasphemous upon its inception, The Origin of the World, a term traditionally reserved for reference to God, portrays the vagina as the anatomical and material origin of human life.

Its ambiguous and visually confrontational approach to the sexualization of the female body, coupled with its incendiary title, underscores a fraught and multifaceted historical relationship to female sexuality and the male gaze.

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Rona Pondick, Metamorphosis of an Object, 2009

171 Renate Bertlmann, Tender Pantomimes. Pantomime Pacifier-Dance), 1976

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173 Fawn Rogers, Happy As A Clam, 2020, oil on canvas 167

174 Votives, Fawn Rogers, 2019

175 Katherina Fritsch, Muschel (Rosa) / Shell (pink), 2013

Utagawa Kunisada, Hatsune Shunshoku dar ume, Japan, 1842

During the Edo Period (c. 1603–1867), the artistic tradition of shunga, literally translated as ‘spring pictures’, gained tremendous popularity in Japan.

These artworks, as exemplified by this ukiyo-e woodblock print by Kunisada, featured graphic, vividly colored and often fantastical depictions of sexuality, (including female sexuality and non-heteronormative sexual expressions) without shame.

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Ren Hang (1987- 2017) born in Jilin, China

"I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots... Or they do have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasures. I want to say that our cocks and pussies are not embarrassing at all."

Ren Hang

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Ruth Bernhard, Shell in Silk, 1943

The aesthetic and symbolic sensuality of the oyster, highly regarded long before its identification as protandric, or sequentially hermaphroditic, is encapsulated in the 20th century through notable works by female artists, such as the shell photographs of Ruth Bernhard.

Fawn Rogers, photograph, 181 2020

Spiral goddess symbol, neo-pagan sculpture, c. 1970s CE

The Goddess Movement emerged as a predominantly neopagan set of practices and beliefs in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe in the 1970s. The movement expanded as a reaction to perceptions of traditional organized religion as male-centric in both content and perspective, and offered the alternative of goddess worship with a focus on gender and femininity.

Bettie Page, 1950s

The ascent of mid-century photography and the 'pin-up' motif gave rise to new incarnations of the Venus figure, not only inspired by but visually synonymous with their subjects, who were often ironically bound to a public code of conduct.

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Fawn Rogers, GODOG, 2020

"Wouldn't the world be a different place if we greeted each other like this? When I look at someone upside down it feels humbling, shameless and playful, and easier to acknowledge individual realities."

Bruce Nauman, Mindfuck, 2013

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Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2019

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Fawn Rogers, Hello 1 and Hello 2, 2019, mixed media

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190 Sara Lucas, Nice Tits, 2011

191 Sara Lucas, Random Mother, 2011

Lee Bul, Transhuman? Cyborg W1-W4, 1998

Redolent of both ancient Greco-Roman sculptures and more recent appropriations, Lee Bul’s female cyborg figures appear as fragmented and suspended, exaggeratedly feminine yet decidedly posthuman.

Lee Bul, Cyborg Torso, 1964

“I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” Donna Haraway 193

Takashi Murakami, Nurse Ko2, 2011

The intersection of art and the fetishization of the female form is arguably exemplified in Murakami’s sculptural doll series.

Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019 CE

Reconfiguring notions of gender, race, and representational inequity in art history, this series of four sculptures by Wangechi Mutu was commissioned to occupy exterior spaces of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art which had remained vacant for over a century.

“Women’s bodies are always at the front of so much of the expression, the hostility, the magnificence of how humankind sees itself.”

Wangechi Mutu

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“Caryatids, throughout history, have carried buildings to express the might and the wealth of a particular place. In Greek architecture, you see these women in their beautiful robes, and then in African sculpture across the continent, you see these women either kneeling or sitting, sometimes holding a child, as well as holding up the seat of the king. It felt like this was a very ubiquitous position for women across many, many histories.... I wanted to keep the DNA of the woman in an active pose, but I didn’t want her to carry the weight of something or someone else.” Wangechi Mutu

Fawn Rogers's notebook, 2019, 3D scan print

Sarah Lucas, Power in Woman, Sir John Sloane’s Museum, London, 2016

Arrayed in a variety of poses, Sarah Lucas’s Power in Woman sculptures combine elements of the provocative, playful, and matter-of-fact, featuring plaster statues of the lower halves of female bodies. Aligned with Lucas’s preceding work, a distinctly non-male perspective is palpable in the appropriation of a traditionally male form, and in the intersection of sexuality, humor, and historicity.

Fawn Rogers, Pandrogeny notebook, 2019

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Fawn Rogers's pastel drawings, 2019

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Fawn Rogers, sketch, 2019

Helmut Newton, Anonymous, Monte Carlo, 2000

Hans Bellmer (left to right) La Poupée 1936/65; La Toupie, 1938/68; La demi-poupée, 1971

Frequently hinging on reconfigurations of the female body, the distinctive doll motifs of Hans Bellmer’s work include dissected, exaggerated, mirrored, fragmented, and wildly reimagined incarnations of the female form. Here, the doll is fetishistic, arguably redolent of ancient Venus charms and goddess figurines. In the extraction and layering of particular bodily components, such sculptures often point to notions of embodiment and disembodiment.

"I spend a lot of time thinking about the pain we inflict as human beings.

Although it causes me a lot of suffering and I weep for the world, I still sharpen my oyster knife. You cannot be alive and not inflict damage. There is no purely harmless way to exist." Fawn Rogers

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Fawn Rogers, Eat Me, 2020, smoked oyster boxes with oil paint

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Louise Bourgeois, Femme, and Single III, 1996

Exploring such themes as femininity, domesticity, and death, Louise Bourgeois’s sculptural representations span diverse conceptions of gender across a variety of media.

Particular works, such as Femme, recall a legacy of fragmentary female sculptural representation, while works such as Single III depict both masculine and feminine elements in a challenge to simplistic notions of identity.

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Fawn Rogers’ Orgy Pillows are on one level as innocent and charming in their promised pleasures as abstract stuffed animals can be. Yet in her title and the twisting nature of her constructed forms a wealth of narratives of love, lust, savagery and loneliness appear. Art historically there are few subjects more subtle yet erotically overloaded than bedding. In all depictions in two to three dimensions the lumps and ripples of covers and pillows reminds us that in most honest biographies the experience of divine connection, our most ruthless heartbreaks, and life altering pleasure take place while one’s body is supine on a cushioned surface and resting on or wrapped around pillows of various types, which all refer back directly to the bodies they are intended to comfort and cushion.

Yet these pillows are bound together with Frankenstein stitches, reminiscent of rough battlefield surgical sutures. In their palette of human flesh tones these indescribable shapes feel like either former lovers that have been hacked down to their usable parts or perhaps human building blocks, fleshy clay to lump together into the shape of an ideal lover.

The representations of skin color conjure the menu of received flesh tones and conjure the uncomfortable history of racialized eroticism and the fetishization of flesh tones. Even expressing a desire to either secure or avoid a lover of a certain skin tone and other racial features is now so problematized as to be undiscussable. Yet as the great feminist painter Marilyn Minter states in multiple interviews, no one has politically correct erotic fantasies. Rogers’ Orgy Pillows are a step in surfacing this uncomfortable, but necessary discussion.

In actual group sex scenes, we do not experience our orgy playmates as full human beings with intellectual and spiritual lives, with back-stories and romantic histories. Ideally, they are intellectually respected, and their choices and desires are expressed and fulfilled. Yet in the swirling heat of multiple aroused bodies, arms, legs, chests, and genitals are as chaotically mixed and ill-defined as these pillows. Whom a lump of flesh is attached to is unimportant. All that matters is the nearest moist nerve endings and psychological arousal matrix. That is both the joy and the sorrow of the activity.

In recent years designers and manufacturers, open to the way we actually use our bedrooms, have created two new inventions designed to help stave off loneliness and multiply pleasure. One is the roughly body-sized pillows we can cuddle up with in lieu of a human or canine companion. The second are wedge shaped padded forms, designed as props during sexual play to render angles of approach and sexual positions easier to maintain during longer play sessions and to achieve more memorable and transcendent pleasures. In an array of fleshy tones Rogers’ sculptures conjure a utopian sexual landscape in which all bodies are equally available as lovers. Yet even as presented, there exists a hint of sorrow, the objects themselves abandoned in an art space speak of desires for connection unfulfilled. Even that just might be contradicted and the primacy of bodily pleasures reestablished if willing gallery visitors take time out of their days with friends to cuddle and thereby reanimate these body surrogates. Bill Arning 210

Fawn Rogers, Orgy Pillows Body Parts and Five Skin Color, 2017

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Fawn Rogers, neon, GODOG, 2020

"The separation between the divine and the banal is so artificial, they are completely intertwined."

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214 The World is Your Oyster, oil on canvas, 2020 Fawn Rogers, 1 of 22 paintings based on still images from video istallation

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