Tanga Tanga #56

Description

In Sonja Yakovleva’s (*1989) paper cuts, women have taken over the sexual regime and subjugated the patriarchal system. They shamelessly use men as objects to satisfy their lust. But it is about more than the utopian-hedonistic reversal of relations. In the work of the Frankfurt artist, which is influenced by sex-positive feminism, pornography and art history are reflected just as much as popular motifs, fairy tales, and myths with which misogynist, racist, and homophobic ideologies were inscribed in the collective consciousness from Biedermeier and the colonial period to National Socialism and Stalinism. Precisely because it was considered domestic and feminine, extremely graphic and simplistic, silhouettes lent themselves to it. Yet Yakovleva uses this technique in her shimmering paper cuts to create the opposite – precarious grey areas in which women’s personal and collective histories, power relations, representation, sexuality, and violence are renegotiated.