Sao Paulo (AFP)
A 33-meter-long sculpture representing, in various shades of red, a giant vulva has been installed on a mountain in Brazil: its creator thus seeks to promote the debate on gender issues in the South American country.
The work called "Diva" was created on a mountain in the municipality of Agua Preta, 130 km from Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco (north-east) by the plastic artist Juliana Notari, 45 years old.
Composed of an excavation 6 meters deep covered with concrete and resin, it required the work of more than twenty people for nearly eleven months, according to the artist.
"With + Diva +, I use art to launch a dialogue on issues dealing with gender issues from a female point of view", explains the artist in a post posted on her Facebook account.
"These questions are more and more urgent," she adds.
According to the press release presenting the work, Diva "underlines the outstanding questions in the poetics of the artist, who since 2003 has been working with female anatomy and seeks to provoke a discussion around the sexual taboos imposed on women".
The creation of this work in a Brazil which has experienced in recent years an ultra-conservative push in large sectors of society, having notably led to the election of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, has created controversy.
The artist's Facebook post was the subject of numerous criticisms, jokes and hateful comments.
"All those who find that ugly are accused of fascists, oh my God! If she wanted her quarter of an hour of fame, she had it", thus reacted a Net surfer.
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, author of "Bacurau" (2019, Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival) and "Aquarius" (2016), supported the artist.
The reactions "are a mirror, a success," tweeted the director who celebrated the creation of such a play "in the midst of the Bolsonaro era".
© 2021 AFP