Sophia Wallace’s CLITERACY hits the streets (photo by Hrag Vartanian for Hyperallergic)
You thought that headline was a joke, right? It might be a phallucy, or a fallacy, or it could be just plain phantasmagoric, or phallocentric, or … it could be why you decided to stop for a minute and read this story.
We live in a culture that rewards the act of jerking off a penis more than learning the intricacies and pleasure-oriented qualities of the clit. The art world, the regular world, the theater world, not even the supposedly art-y spaces of American culture offer anything close to gender equality, and especially not to gender non-conforming folks. It seems like a big duh, but white privilege and male privilege can both be very easily taken for granted, accepted as status quo, and then laughed about later amongst (rude, lame, jerky) friends. It’s harder to look at oneself and start unpacking these privileges, and thus diving into a messier type of culture work. This is the America we live in. Duh.
Rather than take it like a man, NYC-based artist Sophia Wallace takes an army of clits to the streets of New York City, art galleries, and the world of social media. Operating through text-based works that echo propaganda-ish slogans — “Don’t Tread on Me” becomes “Don’t Tread on My Clit,” in one instance — she creates signage in the form of street art and billboards to spread Cliteracy: 100 Natural Laws, which exposes cultural overcurrents of misogyny while also considering the effects of internalizing it, particularly for people who live in female-gendered bodies. One such cliteracy reads: “Penetration with a penis is just one of innumerable ways to have sex,” while another pointedly asks “What’s your relationship with the clit?”
Read the full story on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/75896/ridin-the-clit-rodeo-one-phallusy-at-a-time/
