The story of the Yoni, the sacred vulva

The story of the Yoni, the sacred vulva

Giorgia Massari · 7 days ago · Art

Have you ever heard the word yoni? Probably the more spiritual among you have. Yoni is in fact the Sanskrit term (sacred and ancient language of India) that refers to the female genitals, but not only that, more generally it indicates a sacred place that was associated precisely with the vagina, the primordial cradle from which life originates. Today we will discuss the strong symbolism that has been enshrined in the female organ for millennia and its representation over the centuries. How did we go from a veneration of the vulva to its total censorship? How did we come today to pseudo-free the vulva from sexual references?

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
@the.vulva.gallery

Leaping far back in time, reaching the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, we realize how female representation, linked to fertility, appears much earlier than male representation. For ancient Indians, the Yoni, or sacred vulva, was an object of veneration. Wall carvings of the Yoni, carved on rocks and represented by a downward-pointing triangle, are among the most archaic human manifestations of the sacred. The oldest and best known is undoubtedly the Venus of Willendorf from 24,000 B.C. – in 2018 became the subject of scandal because Facebook, considering it a pornographic image, removed it from the platform – in which the sacred vulva is clearly visible.

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Venere di Willendorf

For centuries, therefore, yoni was worshipped in different cultures, especially by Eastern ones, but with the rise of new patriarchal religions, these practices became minor, secret and acquired an esoteric component. Especially in the West, with the rise of Christianity, we see a complete censorship of yoni and, more generally, of the female body from a sexual perspective. We had to wait for the passage of long centuries of female oppression to come to a pseudo liberation of the symbolism of the yoni, or vulva, or vagina. Now no longer associated with something forbidden, to be kept hidden out of modesty, but associated instead with femininity and the power of life.

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Édouard Manet, Olympia

A turning point occurred in the late 19th century with a series of scandals related to art and the depiction of the female anatomy. One need only think of Édouard Manet‘s very famous Olympia, which depicts a completely naked prostitute in a proud and brazen pose. Manet at that time had become the king of scandal, above all with his work Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. Mind you, this does not mean that until then female nudes were nonexistent, on the contrary, but they were all related to the divine sphere (goddesses, nymphs, allegories, vices or virtues) or to the mythological sphere, which made it more tolerable. In Manet to be naked is an ordinary woman, even a prostitute. It has to be said that in Manet’s work our Yoni is not seen, the pre-Impresionist painter does not venture completely but maintains a certain modesty, in fact Olympia‘s hand does compre genitals.

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Gustav Courbet, L’origine del mondo – Rosemarie Trockel, Replace me

Just three years later, the bar is raised: Gustave Courbet depicts a close-up of a vulva and titles it The Origin of the World (1866). The peculiarity of the work is undoubtedly its seductive power, which, however, deviates from a pornographic and mischievous sphere. A private, everyday moment is shown realistically to the general public. The work is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and testifies to how even today such explicit nudity can cause a certain scandal. Almost 150 years later, German artist Rosemerie Trockel reworked Courbet’s work, producing the photomontage Replace me (2009) in which pubic hair is replaced by a tarantula. The figure of the animal, considered deadly, creates a parallel between the vulva and something dangerous, highlighting how still in the new millennium it is “scary” to talk openly about female genitalia.

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Jamie McCartney, La grande muraglia

We can say that since Courbet, we will have to wait almost a hundred years to witness a stance that will lead to a liberation of the Yoni in the visual sphere and in mass culture. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, a number of artists, mostly women, began to practice performances, installations, and more generally to create artworks of all kinds starring the vulva. The forbidden side was revealed. The vulva was freed from sexual references and became the vehicle for revolutionary messages from a feminist perspective.

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Shigeko Kubota, Vagina Painting

Let’s start by listing some of them and dwelling on the most interesting and unique ones.
In 1965, artist Shigeko Kubota made Vagina Painting, using her own vagina to guide the paintbrush and thus draw red lines on a sheet of paper. More recently, in 2015, it was Swiss artist Milo Moiré, in a similar position, who created a series of performances involving the creation of canvases by dropping colored eggs, expelled directly from her vagina.

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Judy Chicago, Red Flag, 1971

Art is increasingly at the service of women’s emancipation, or rather, our yoni becomes the instrument and subject of a series of artistic researches aimed at unhinging patriarchal and macho certainties. In this sense, it is no longer only the representation of the body or its use that is the protagonist, but different declinations take hold, especially related to taboos such as menstruation. With this in mind, it was Judy Chicago in 1971 who made the work Red Flag, a photo-lithograph depicting a woman in the act of removing a bloody tampon, later Carolee Schneeman also deals with the theme with the 1983 performance entitled Fresh Blood: a Drewam Morphology, as does Tamara Wyndham who in her Vulva Prints makes impressions of her bloody vulva.

Speaking of ultra-contemporary, there are many artists making illustrations and works of all kinds on the subject, nowadays in a freer way, being able to afford a lighter language, sometimes ironic, sometimes informative. In this sense, it is interesting to mention the first museum dedicated to the vagina, located inside London’s Camden Market. Opened in 2019, the Vagina Museum celebrates “any person with a vagina” with a transfeminist and inclusive gaze, inviting above all accurate information on the subject. For the occasion, illustrator Charlotte Willcox creates ten fun and informative illustrations with the intention of debunking false myths. In the same vein, Hilde Sam Atalanta creates the educational Instagram account @the.vulva.gallery.

There is still a long way to go but, perhaps, one day we will be able to completely free ourselves from malice, returning to the purity that our Hindu ancestors had in conceiving the power of the yoni. Meanwhile, we will continue to follow all those artists who celebrate the vulva, depicting her with beauty and unveiling her “mysteries.”

Yoni vagina | Collater.al
Charlotte Willcox, 2019
Yoni vagina | Collater.al
@the.vulva.gallery
The story of the Yoni, the sacred vulva
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Balenciaga paraded in front of his story

Balenciaga paraded in front of his story

Andrea Tuzio · 2 days ago · Style

Yesterday, Balenciaga presented its Spring 2024 collection with a 5-minute short video in which, in the pouring rain, the eye of the (motionless) camera captures “passersby”, who are obviously wearing garments from the upcoming Spring from the Kering Group-owned fashion house.

It all took place on the sidewalk in front of 10 Avenue George V in the heart of Paris, which is the address of Balenciaga’s first couture store, which (re)opened its doors in July 2022.
In reality, however, its history starts much further back.
For it was right there that back in 1937, 53 years before its reopening, the Spanish master of Haute Couture and founder of the maison Cristóbal Balenciaga, started it all by opening his first store, later closed in 1968.

The Balenciaga Couture Store is located inside the most famous triangle in Paris, the one between the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Concorde, a historic place in the French capital, where the fashion house directed by Demna wanted to give continuity to the legacy of its founder by reopening and giving a new life to that store full of meaning.

Two floors, one dedicated to women and the other to men, where the very essence of Balenciaga is enhanced by bringing together traditions, made up of classic craftsmanship and workmanship, with the most innovative techniques.

The Couture Store concept is a gateway to Couture fashion, which remains to obscure universe, especially for the younger generation. In this new store, products, bespoke services and retail excellence are a reinvention of the experience for our customers. It is exciting to be able to present this level of craftsmanship, creativity and savoir-faire made in France at our historic address”, these were the words of Balenciaga CEO Cédric Charbit at the presentation of the project.

Today, Demna makes his Balenciaga Couture Store a symbol of the fashion house’s philosophy as well as the focal point of his narrative where past, present and future meet and history takes shape as it is made. 

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Jean Paul Gaultier but in the movies

Jean Paul Gaultier but in the movies

Andrea Tuzio · 20 hours ago · Style

Jean Paul Gaultier is without question one of the most brilliant and eccentric designers ever.
His dazzling and incredible career as a couturier is studded with unparalleled and unique peaks that have made history in contemporary fashion.
In reality, however, the spark that started it all and gave us the wonderful work of the enfant prodige of French fashion must be sought in the seventh art, cinema

The jailbird film was Falbalas, by French director Jacques Becker, released in 1945. The film tells the story of a womanizing fashion designer who begins courting the girlfriend of a close friend, but things do not go as planned.

“I was literally seduced by the atmosphere of the film and particularly that of a maison during World War II”, this is how Jean Paul Gaultier expressed himself about the very film and why it was the enlightenment that then led him on the path that led him to be what he was and still is today.

Growing up in the Parisian suburbs, JPG never studied to become a designer; he was for all intents and purposes a self-taught designer who began sending his sketches to the most fashionable French designers of the time. It was Pierre Cardin who first glimpsed the potential and enormous talent of that very young designer, so much so that he hired him as his assistant in 1970.
It was in 1976, however, that Gaultier launched his eponymous brand, and from there on we know the story: the French designer would establish himself as one of the most eclectic and brilliant personalities in the history of contemporary fashion.

It was, however, with Peter Greenaway’s 1989 film, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, that JPG could finally give vent to his desire to be reunited with his first love. Gaultier will be the costume designer of that film, where Helen Mirren will wear the very famous black bodysuit cut with the unmistakable bondage aesthetic, a garment that will represent from that moment on, the perfect synthesis between the French designer’s work as a pure designer and his work as a costume designer.
She would work again in this role in The Lost City or The Lost City of Children, a 1995 French science fiction film directed, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, set in the near future and winking at the steampunk style.

But it was in 1997 that his flair in the film world manifested itself in all its grandeur.
French filmmaker Luc Besson chose him as costume designer for the most expensive European-produced film ever for the time, the iconic The Fifth Element.

Here Gaultier can really play and have fun like never before. In fact, more than $90 million will be allocated for the film – for a global gross of more than $264 – and more than 1,000 costumes will be made.
The film’s aesthetic will remain in the collective imagination by defining an era and a style, receiving a César Awards nomination for best costumes as well.

Forever indelible in the memory of all who saw the film are the white headbands worn by Leeloo, a being with humanoid features and played by the beautiful Milla Jovovich, or the leopard catsuit worn by Chris Tucker – DJ Ruby Rhod in the film – to give another example.
It was not only the costumes that were stellar, the cast was no less: In addition to the actors already mentioned we find Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Tricky, Mathieu Kassovitz and many others.

His being a visionary, a forerunner of the times and trends-just think of his overcoming already at the time the concept of genre in order to immerse the film’s characters in the future in which they live (the film is in fact set mainly in 2263)-makes Jean Paul Gaultier a creative genius unrepeatable even in the world of cinema. In 2004 he will also work on the costumes for Pedro Almodóvar’s La mala educación together with Paco Delgado.

His artistic stature as a costume designer and all-around movie man would later be made definitive in 2012, when the couturier was chosen as a juror for the 65th Cannes Film Festival.

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Saint Laurent will runway in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie

Saint Laurent will runway in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie

Andrea Tuzio · 4 days ago · Style

If Valentino announced last week that it will present its next Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2023/24 collection within the striking location of the Château de Chantilly, Saint Laurent will not be outdone.

According to reports from WWD, the brand headed by Anthony Vaccarello will present its next men’s collection on June 12, with a show in the beautiful setting of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, in the area known as the Kulturforum.

After a long 5-year closure due to a major renovation by the international firm David Chipperfield Architects, founded by the British architect of the same name in 1985, the Neue Nationalgalerie reopened its doors to the public in 2021.

The marvelous structure, opened in 1968 and designed by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe -entirely made of steel and glass – is undoubtedly one of the most dazzling and successful examples of German modernism with an entrance hall completely surrounded by glass walls and a truly imposing appearance despite being developed on a single floor. The ceiling, on the other hand, is a huge metal grid. The whole building tells the philosophy of its creator very well, where the overwhelming gives way to the essential.

The collection housed within the Neue Nationalgalerie is dedicated to 20th-century art, with works also from the late 19th century up to and including precisely the entire 20th century. In fact, masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Giorgio De Chirico, Salvador Dali and Paul Klee, just to name a few, are on display.

As for the show of Saint Laurent’s upcoming Spring/Summer men’s collection, the only thing certain is that the date is set for June 12 at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. 

Saint Laurent will runway in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie
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Bottega Veneta celebrates Lina Bo Bardi

Bottega Veneta celebrates Lina Bo Bardi

Andrea Tuzio · 1 week ago · Style

Bottega Veneta‘s project entitled “The Square”, a journey to discover the world’s cultures through art, which inspires dialogue and instills curiosity, celebrating local artists and artisans, continues.
After stops in Dubai in 2022 and Tokyo, the Italian fashion house this time lands in Brazil, specifically in São Paulo, paying homage to the naturalized Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, and her Casa de Vidro.

The Casa de Vidro was Lina Bo Bardi’s first ever building project, nestled in the lush vegetation of the Morumbi neighborhood in São Paulo, it was the architect’s residence until her death in 1992.

Achillina Bo aka Lina Bo Bardi, was born in Rome in 1914 and, after graduation began her career in Gio Ponti’s studio. She moved to Brazil in 1946 along with her husband Pietro Maria Bardi, where she became a Brazilian citizen in 1951, the same year in which she finished the construction of her first building as an architect, precisely the Casa de Vidro.

She would become one of the most influential personalities of Brazilian modernism, and would also be a prolific artisan making jewelry, costumes, furniture and stage sets throughout her life.

“It is truly inspiring to meet here with artists of different generations, different disciplines, and from all over Brazil to celebrate the legacy of Lina Bo Bardi and the richness of Brazilian culture. Bottega Veneta is synonymous with timeless style. With The Square São Paulo, we recognize how Lina’s ideas and aesthetics remain relevant today, a testament to the capacity for change inherent in design and culture”, these are the words of Bottega Veneta Creative Director Matthieu Blazy.

The initiative, personally supervised by Blazy and curated by Mari Stockler, will be structured in four thematic paths that will then be further explored in as many four volumes, brought together in a limited edition box set.
Within the structure, other works created by other contemporary Brazilian artists will be placed alongside the architect’s creations in a dialogue between the past, present and future of the South American country’s creativity and culture.

The Casa de Vidro opens its doors to the public today, May 26, and will be open to visitors until June 3.

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