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 town of Agua Preta, 130 kilometers from Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco (northeast) by the visual artist Juliana Notari, 45 years old. .
Read also: In Brazil, Bolsonaro on an anti-vaccine campaign
Composed of an excavation six 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 increasingly 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 surge 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.
“Anyone who thinks that is ugly is called fascists, oh my God!
If she wanted her quarter of an hour of fame, she had it, ”
thus reacted a 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 middle of the Bolsonaro era"
.
