Art and Ecosexuality
“WE ARE THE ECOSEXUALS. The Earth is our lover,” reads the first line of artists Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle’s 2016 Ecosex Manifesto. Stephens & Sprinkle use the term “ecosexuality” to describe an erotic connection to nature and wrote the manifesto to outline who they are and what they believe in. This exhibition’s title refers to their goal to shift the paradigm of “earth as mother” to “earth as lover.” The phrase “Lover Earth” denotes a reciprocal relationship between humans and Earth rather than a relationship in which humans depend on the earth’s resources without nourishing the land in return. The closing line of the manifesto states the Ecosex Pledge: “I promise to love, honor, and cherish you Earth, until death brings us closer together forever.” Stephens & Sprinkle perform what they refer to as ecosex rituals that involve making love to and marrying the earth. They created a document entitled 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth, offering examples of how to perform these rituals: “Admire her views often . . . Hug and stroke his trees . . . Swim naked in their waters . . . Lay on top of her, or let her get on top of you.” Such performances promote environmental education and activism as well as sex positivity. Lover Earth draws on this concept of ecosexuality, bringing together a selection of paintings, prints, photographs, and moving images from the Tang collection to explore the connection between human bodies and the earth and to encourage us to think critically about our relationship to the planet. This exhibition recontextualizes and provides a new lens through which to view these works. Together, the art presented creates a diverse ecology that celebrates nature, sexuality, and the ways in which these ideas intersect. Lover Earth: Art and Ecosexuality is curated by Caroline Coxe ’20, the 2019–20 Endowed Eleanor Linder Winter ‘43 Intern, and is supported by the Friends of the Tang and the Carter-Rodriguez Fund for Student-Curated Programs.
All artworks are in the collection of the Tang Teaching Museum unless otherwise noted.
Corita Kent (born Fort Dodge, Iowa, 1918–1986)
for the oaks, 1971 Serigraph 23 ¹/⁸ x 22 ⁷/⁸ inches Gift of Harry Hambly, serigrapher, Hambly Studios, 2016.14.52
manflowers, 1969 Serigraph 23 x 12 inches Gift of Harry Hambly, serigrapher, Hambly Studios, 2016.14.215
Corita Kent was a Roman Catholic nun, artist, and activist who spent most of her life in Los Angeles. In the late 1960s, however, she left the Catholic Church and relocated to Boston. Her work frequently incorporates excerpts from poetry, literature, folklore, and religious texts. Made shortly after moving to Boston, for the oaks quotes Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 14 from Leaves of Grass: “The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections.” This poetry collection was a pivotal work for Whitman: inspired by the transcendentalist movement happening in and around Boston, he shifted his focus from religion and philosophy to the pleasures of the body and material world. This shift resembles Kent’s experience after leaving the Catholic Church to pursue her artistic career. Nature is a frequent theme in her work, such as in for the oaks, a bold but simple print that references the landscape with abstracted shapes. Through the use of Whitman’s poetry, Kent exalts the sensuous connection between body and earth. One of the fundamental principles of the ecosexuality manifesto is a commitment to activism: it claims that world peace is essential for the health of our global ecosystem and encourages the end of war because according to Stephens & Sprinkle’s 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth, “bombs really hurt” the planet. In manflowers, Kent pairs an image of two wounded soldiers, one tending to the other, with the exclamation “Man-power!” and the title of the antiwar folk song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” first written in 1955 by Pete Seeger. When this work was printed in 1969, the United States was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and the peaceful protests inspired by the “flower children” during the so-called Summer of Love had escalated into violent rioting against the war and the US government. Kent, who promoted peace and love as the most effective form of activism, uses the song title to reference a shift toward violence in protest tactics. The circular lyrics follow the life cycle of flowers during war, beginning with girls picking them to give to young men and ending with flowers growing on the graves of young soldiers.
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson, 1960
Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing? Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago? Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls picked them, ev’ry one.
Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn? Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing? Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago? Where have all the young girls gone? Gone to young men, ev’ry one.
Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn? Where have all the young men gone, long time passing? Where have all the young men gone, long time ago? Where have all the young men gone? Gone for soldiers, ev’ry one.
When will we ever learn? Oh, when we ever learn? Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing? Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago? Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards, ev’ry one.
When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn? Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing? Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago? Where have all the graveyards gone? Gone to flowers, ev’ry one.
When will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?
Dasha Shishkin (born Moscow, Russia, 1977)
Dedication to Life Among People, 2007 Acrylic and pastel on mylar 60 x 84 inches Gift of Zach Feuer and Alison Fox, Hudson, NY, 2014.17.6a-d Dasha Shishkin’s work is notoriously ambiguous, adhering to broad themes rather than illustrating a clear narrative. Dedication to Life Among People evokes the erotic and sensual pleasures of human life. The large size and dense composition work together to envelope the viewer, inviting us into a messy, sexy ecology of human life.
Dorothy Dehner (born Cleveland, Ohio, 1901–1994)
Improvisation on the Love Theme, c. 1940 Gouache on paper 11 ³/⁸ x 15 ¹/² inches Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation for the Visual Arts, 1999.6 Improvisation on the Love Theme combines motifs of nature and sexuality with narratives of ritualistic displays of love and intimacy between man, woman, and child. Fish and plants, both symbolizing fertility, recur throughout the work. This is not necessarily the artist’s experience with love—Dorothy Dehner never had a child and had a strained relationship with her husband—but rather an “improvisation” based on existing tropes about love and motherhood.
Frank Moore (born New York, 1953–2002)
Jim Self (born Greenville, Alabama, 1954)
Beehive, 1985 16mm film transferred to digital video 15 minutes, 45 seconds Gift of the Gesso Foundation, 2019.6.3 Frank Moore, a visual artist and designer, and Jim Self, a dancer and choreographer, collaborated on Beehive throughout the 1980s. Moore grew up with bees and developed an extensive understanding of their behaviors. Inspired by the way bees dance to communicate, he and Self created this film and a stage ballet of the same name, each set inside a psychedelic, pollen-packed beehive. The film begins with a worker bee returning to the hive after collecting pollen from flowers. Pollen, which fertilizes plants, is the life force that drives our ecosystem forward. Because bees harvest pollen for consumption, they play an essential role in pollination and thus facilitate plant reproduction. Without bees, every other species would eventually die off; they are crucial to the health and vitality of the global ecosystem. The Beehive story culminates in a peculiar and salacious mating scene between a drone bee (Self) and the queen. Throughout, Moore and Self are playing with sexuality and interspecies relationships between bees, plants, and humans in such a way that brings to mind the ecosexual notion of the earth as lover.
Franklin Williams (born Ogden, Utah, 1940)
A Beautiful Dark Moment, 1973 Acrylic, twine, yarn, painted fabric, fabric, canvas, cotton batting 40 x 48 ¹/² x 2 ³/⁴ inches Gift of the Alex Katz Foundation, 2017.50.4 Franklin Williams’s art practice subverts mainstream mid- to late twentieth-century art trends. In the 1960s and 1970s, when many contemporary abstract painters were concerned with hard lines and edges and embracing the physical urgency of art making, Williams instead focused on organic shapes and patterns by means of labor-intensive techniques such as stitching and painting with fine brushes. A Beautiful Dark Moment is composed of abstracted anatomical elements that don’t read as specifically animal- or plant-like, but as both simultaneously. Viewers may identify phallic, vaginal, and breast-like shapes that, upon second glance, transform into plants and insects. The leaf-like patterns reference nature, and the luminous yellow crescents contrasted against the deep green and blue evoke the night, as the title suggests. Williams’s work, with these earthy suggestions, demonstrates how easily our minds conflate nature and the human form.
Clare Richardson (born London, 1973)
Untitled IV, 2000 From Harlemville Chromogenic print 19 x 23 ¹/² inches The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2015.1.206 Untitled IV is from a series of photographs about a community called Harlemville where people adhere to the teachings and values of Rudolf Steiner and his Waldorf educational system. Steiner’s teachings value freedom of expression and creativity above all else. Clare Richardson spent two years living in and observing the community. During her time observing Harlemville, she was particularly struck by community members’ reverence for nature. She frequently photographed them experiencing blissful and sensuous moments with nature, such as the one captured here, showing a group of boys post–mud bath. The spirit of Harlemville embodies the tenets of ecosexuality by fostering joyful relationships between body and earth and placing a strong emphasis on the importance of community.
Flor Garduño (born Mexico City, 1957)
Carla, México, 1998 Platinum-palladium print 13 ³/⁴ x 18 inches The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2015.1.398 Flor Garduño’s intimate portrait explores themes of fertility and feminine beauty using floral imagery and the female body. In Carla, México, the model bares her nude body with outstretched arms and holds before her a delicate sheet of black floral lace. The lace disappears into the dark background, giving the appearance of the figure’s skin being overlaid with the floral pattern. The lace over her body suggests that she is both protected and empowered by the flowers that envelope her, vulnerable in her nakedness, and yet possessing all the beauty and resilience of a flower. She is not looking at the viewer, but she is aware of the viewer’s presence. She neither hides her body nor offers it for consumption. The age-old comparison between women and flowers has been used as a framework for colonizing and cultivating the female body. This portrait overcomes that narrative by placing the agency in the hands of the model and allowing her to define her own relationship to the floral imagery of the lace.
John O’Reilly (born Orange, New Jersey, 1930)
Carpaccio/La Tour (Worcester Street Series #3, Somerset St), 1992 Polaroid montage on 4-ply board 12 x 15 ³/⁸ inches The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2015.1.101 John O’Reilly’s collages explore human sexuality using a combination of found images from porn magazines, art books, and vintage coloring books as well as his own Polaroid images. Carpaccio/La Tour (Worcester Street Series #3, Somerset St) is from a series exploring the artist’s hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts. Here, a man having an erotic experience is pictured against a backdrop of trees and musicians. The trees appear phallic and the presence of the musicians conjures an imaginary soundtrack that elevates the sense of euphoria experienced by the figure in the foreground. The disembodied arm pleasuring the man disappears into the landscape, almost as if the landscape itself is engaging in a sexual act with him.
Olivia Parker (born Boston, 1941)
Bosc, 1977, printed 1980 Toned gelatin silver contact print 7 ¾ x 9 inches The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2015.1.143
Pea Pod, 1976 Toned gelatin silver contact print 7 x 5 inches The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2015.1.144
An overarching goal of Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle’s ecosexuality manifesto is to encourage a more thoughtful relationship with the earth and to cherish it as one would a lover. By eroticizing nature, ecosexuality seeks to change the way people view the planet. Likewise, Olivia Parker photographs fruits with such tenderness that they are transformed into something erotic. The crevice of a fertile pea pod, the seductive curves of a ripe, juicy pear: this imagery urges viewers to see the fruits of the earth through a sensuous lens, which may in turn lead us to forge more intimate connections with earth’s offerings.
(read left to right, beginning upper left)
Ana Mendieta (born Havana, Cuba, 1948–1985)
Silueta Sangrienta, 1975 8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent 1 minute, 51 seconds Tang purchase in partnership with the New Media Arts Consortium, a collaboration of the art museums at Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Colby College, Mount Holyoke College, and Skidmore College, 2017.19 For Ana Mendieta, body, nature, and art are inextricably linked. A feminist pioneer of the Land Art movement in the 1970s, Mendieta performs rituals that examine her relationship to the earth. In Silueta Sangrienta, these rituals reference sacrifice to demonstrate the loss experienced by the artist when she had to leave her homeland of Cuba as a child and come to the United States. In a poem by Mendieta from 1981, the artist provides context for the mode in which she creates her work:
Pain of Cuba body I am my orphanhood I live
In Cuba when you die the earth that covers us Speaks.
But here covered by the earth whose prisoner I am I feel death palpitating underneath the earth.
And, so as my whole body is filled with want of Cuba I go on to make my work upon the earth, to go on is victory.
In this poem, Mendieta’s connection to the land in Cuba is evident—she reveres it and longs for it. In contrast, she considers herself a prisoner in the United States, “covered by the earth” as if she is already dead. It is her work, made quite literally “upon the earth,” that allows her to overcome this feeling. Silueta Sangrienta explores her conflicted feelings about the land. The video begins with Mendieta lying on her back at the bank of a river as if the earth is cradling her. Moments later, her body vanishes to reveal a trench in the shape of her silhouette. If the video is an allegory for her life, this would be the moment she was taken out of Cuba. In one frame, her silhouette fills with bright red liquid and becomes the silueta sangrienta, or bloody silhouette. Blood, here, has more than one meaning. It evokes ideas of sacrifice and death, but it also references Mendieta’s interest in the Afro-Carribbean religion Santeria. In Santeria, blood is ashe, a powerful life force. Blood is ruled by Ochún, the goddess of sweet water and a symbol of female sexuality who controls the rivers. While some viewers may look at the bloody silhouette and see death, those familiar with Santeria may see its associations with sex and vitality. The film concludes with Mendieta face-down in the bloody silhouette. She is no longer held up by the land. Instead, she lays on top of it, muscles tensed, almost as if to press the earth away from her, harnessing the power of the life force beneath her to remain above the earth: “to go on is victory.”
Paula Wilson (born Chicago, 1975)
In the Desert: Mooning, 2016 Collagraph on muslin from two plates, handprinted collage on muslin, inkjet collage on silk on canvas and wood 69 ¹/² x 43 ³/⁴ inches Tang purchase, 2017.8 In the Desert: Mooning is a joyful work emblematic of Paula Wilson’s deep reverence for both nature and the female form. The rear end, with accentuated highlights that punningly resemble crescent moons, is a recurring motif in the artist’s work. The moon can be seen as a feminine symbol because of the association between moon cycles and menstrual cycles, as well as the duality between sun and moon as it relates to the duality between male and female. In Greek mythology, the sun (masculinity) rules the whole cosmos while the moon (femininity) rules the earth and its oceans. Here, the moon, reimagined as a rear end in the sky, imbues the print with erotic feminine power. Although it stands vertically, the work resembles a rug upon a wooden floor. Wilson rejects a longstanding art-world notion that textile arts, historically associated with domestic “women’s work,” are not “high art”; she seeks to elevate and honor the laborintensive rituals of rug making. Tucked into the desert landscape is a trio of picnickers, sitting upon a similar rug. Their attention is not on the rear end in the sky, but instead on one another. These individuals, like all of us, are unconsciously connected to the quiet labors of women just by existing on this earth. This work seemingly celebrates these labors and uplifts feminine creative power.
Paula Wilson (born Chicago, 1975)
Salty & Fresh, 2014 Digital video 8 minutes, 4 seconds Tang purchase According to Paula Wilson, Salty & Fresh, recalling the creation myth of a painting, is about “an artwork coming to life to understand its own place in history.” She seeks to subvert the art historical narrative of the masculine Western canon and instead privilege creation through the symbolic birthing powers associated with bodies of water. Wilson emerges as a mystical sea-dwelling art goddess, and onlookers watch as living, painted vessels are birthed from the sea by the hand of the artist. The presence of the vessels references femininity both in their shape and receptivity. Wilson says of these forms, “Vessels have a global influence and earthiness to them. I often think about how to have figuration in my work—and a female bend—without have to add a body per se.” This video is emblematic of the mythologies that the artist creates about nature and feminine creativity. Wilson has cited Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “The Erotic as Power” as a driving inspiration behind much of her work. The essay is about redefining eroticism as a source of power for women and dismantling the patriarchal structures that have rendered the erotic as pornographic. Wilson’s frequent use of rear ends in her work provides erotic undertones without being overtly sexual. Salty & Fresh embraces the erotic as a source of power for women and conveys an erotic connection to the sea.
Steven Arnold (born Oakland, California, 1943–1994)
Transmitigating Inspiration, 1986 Gelatin silver print 14 x 14 inches The Jack Shear Collection of Photography at the Tang Teaching Museum, 2015.1.44 Steven Arnold, a multidisciplinary artist, was sometimes referred to by his friends and artistic contemporaries as a “queer mystic.” The mythological costuming and exuberant theatricality of his tableaux photographs share the spirit of the ecosexual rituals performed by Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle. In Transmitigating Inspiration, a figure embodying both feminine and masculine traits emerges from a cave-like structure as if born out of a cosmic universe. Caves, which can reference the vagina, also often symbolize portals between worlds and are a frequent motif in Arnold’s work. In his early twenties, he and a group of artist friends took up residence in caves on the island Formentera, off the coast of Spain, where they took LSD daily and explored the surrounding landscape—perhaps influencing his later work. This photograph demonstrates Arnold’s prophetic vision of nonbinary gender and sexual identities that expanded far beyond those that existed in the mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s.
Naomi Fisher (born Miami, 1976)
Assy Flora (Pink Hibiscus, Royal Poinciana, Orchid Tree), 1999 Cibachromes 29 ¹/² x 37 ¹/² inches (each) Promised gift of Michael O. Gold and Sirje Helder Gold Naomi Fisher’s Assy Flora series encapsulates the ecosexual ritual of making love to the earth. These seductive photographs invite viewers to indulge in erotic fantasies about the overwhelmingly lush and fertile tropical landscape of her hometown of Miami. Assy Flora brings to mind the reproductive parallels of plants and humans, such as the anatomical resemblance between flowers and women’s genitalia as well as the ways in which eggs are fertilized. Ecosexuality seeks to recontextualize our relationship to the earth by personifying and eroticizing nature under the assumption that doing so will foster greater respect for the planet. These photographs, in all their whimsy, have a way of humbling the viewer by inviting humans down to earth to reconnect with the land and celebrate our mutual fecundity.
Atong Atem (born Ethiopia, 1991)
Fruit of the Earth, 2016 Digital C-print on Dibond 45 x 30 inches Tang purchase, 2017.12 Western gender ideologies, influenced by Christianity, perceive women to be “of the earth and body” and men to be “of the spirit and mind.” This notion, intended to subjugate women, is part of the continued colonization and cultivation of the female body. Given the patriarchal structure of Western civilization, it also implies the earth’s inherent inferiority to the heavens and to man. This same notion is wrapped up in the Western colonial thought that deemed African cultures as “primitive.” Black women bear a particularly heavy burden because of these stereotypes. They become subject to a colonial gaze that reduces them to savages and has been used to justify the exploitation of their bodies. Atong Atem’s self-portrait subverts the notion that the Black female body exists to be exploited, cultivated, or consumed. She depicts herself with eyes closed, tranquilly enveloped by nature. By using herself as the subject, Atem has agency over her body and its relationship to the earth. She rejects the narrative of primitivism that has been imposed on Black women for centuries, positing herself and her body to be the “fruit of the earth” in a way she chooses. The framework of ecosexuality depends on individuals welcoming the body-earth connection and eradicating an ideology that claims that “civilized” societies are above the earth and its labors. By exalting both herself and nature, Atem embodies this particular ecosexual principle.
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