I love text art. I love neon art. I love feminist art. So I love, love, love Sophia Wallace’s illuminated text sculptures spelling out the clitoris at the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, showing now through June 24, 2016.
FIVE reasons you might love Wallace’s work OVER AND OVER AND OVER, again:
ONE: Sophia Wallace is a fierce conceptual artist, exploring the gendered, sexualized, radicalized body, with a laser focus on the clit. Spy Lit Clit, 2016 here and her additional CLITERACY body of work.
Sophia Wallace, Lit Clit, 2016 & Over and Over and Over, 2016
TWO: Neon is such an interesting medium to use to provoke conversations about the female body. Neon so often brings to mind the pleasure-seeking of red-light districts and porn shops, as well clubs and clairvoyants; yet here neon is illuminating a word that is rarely spoken let alone understood much less respected.
THREE: Um, tttttttthhhhhiiiiiiiissssssss.
Sophia Wallace, My Name On the Surface of a Lost Star, 2016
FOUR: The exhibition’s title was pulled from an ancient Gnostic screed, The Thunder, Perfect Mind. The divine voice is multi-gendered, but primarily a female divinity, proclaiming:
Until it is known, I will say it OVER AND OVER AND OVER
Until it is seen, I will create it OVER AND OVER AND OVER
Until it is present, I will invoke it OVER AND OVER AND OVER
FIVE: The Catinca Tabacaru Gallery is led by a badass female, who is dedicated to exploring authenticity via the language of gender and identity. She also mentioned that Wallace’s golden Swagga Like Us, 2016 piece declaring, “illest clitoris,” would make a great addition to the bedroom, a nightlight of sorts, for perhaps above the headboard. Fucking sold.
Amy Deneson 