Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel is on exhibit at the New Museum from September 26, 2018 to January 20, 2019. What makes her work stand out is her use of unconventional mediums to express ideas about sexuality, gender, and power, usually in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This exhibition is filled with depictions of genitalia, which some may find crude. However, perhaps this is part of Lucas’s purpose—to make the viewer uncomfortable. Through her art, she incites conversations about sex dynamics that people don’t usually want to talk about. Her depictions of male and female genitalia alike subvert authority and start conversations that are still needed today, especially with the rise of feminist movements like #MeToo. Her art is bold, yet at the same time, subtle. One of Lucas’s frequent motifs is the use of furniture to express the ever-existing gender and power dynamics that exist in domestic settings.
The exhibit’s eponymous installation consists of a mattress, a pair of melons, two oranges, a cucumber, and a bucket. It depicts a couple, distinguished by the genitalia depictions lying in bed, probably after sexual intercourse. There’s nothing romantic about the set-up. The mattress is dingy. The bodies lie separated, implying a lack of intimacy ironically after engaging in sexually intimate acts. Lucas is conveying the mundane, and even lonely, side of sex, in a hypersexualized society that would not normally portray this. Cucumbers and melons are often used to depict phalluses and breasts respectively but I was a bit taken aback by Lucas’s depiction of female genitalia with a bucket. It’s a crude depiction; unlike how they are usually portrayed—delicate, and even mystical. Instead, Lucas uses an everyday object to go against society’s ideas of sex as a sacred act.
Lucas uses more furniture to communicate messages about sex and power in “Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab,” which are on a table, positioned to depict the female body, but representing only breasts and genitalia because those body parts are how society identifies women and reduces women to represent only those parts. There are several implications that come with Lucas’s portrayal of female genitalia as a kebab—as food, one with meat inside. Also, in its original exhibit, the “Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab” were replaced daily by Lucas, fresh from the kitchen. Perhaps this act in and of itself was part of the art as well by expressing how women have to cook every day and bring the food to the table.
“The Old Couple” is depicted by two wooden chairs, with a wax phallus mounted on one and a pair of dentures on the other. It’s interesting to note how this time, the woman is not represented with a depiction of genitalia, but the man is. The fake teeth indicate the woman’s old age and because of her old age, she is no longer considered a sexual being. Yet the man is still allowed to be sexual, indicated by the phallic representation and its erect stature.
All three of these installations use minimal materials but contain so many layers of meaning. Lucas forces us to shift the way we see these everyday objects because she transformed their meanings into something sexual. It’s crude, uncomfortable, and flagrant. Yet it makes us question the dynamics that exist in domestic settings.
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