WOMB II (2008)

Materials:- Felt, beads, human hair and latex.
Dimensions:- Height 27cm, Width 30cm, Depth 10cm.

Wombs represent fear in the unconscious mind - Sigmund Freud believed receptacle objects are representative of female genitalia, hence the use caves, labyrinths, and images of hell horror films. The work takes inspiration from Freud’s essay The Uncanny (1919), on the unsettling powers of das unheimlich’ (the uncanny), where a long displaced object hidden object, is to be rediscovered; the womb represents a primordial fear of being swallow up and returning to the place from which we came.

The work explores culturally acceptable expressions of femininity; although self adornment and embroidery is seen as an appropriate feminine past-time, its acceptability is transmuted when applied to a culturally taboo womb.