When The Gloves Come Off

The sky is turning dark blue over Sunset Boulevard, it’s just before dawn in Los Angeles, California. Beside the street, a glowing pair on neon ovaries clad in boxing gloves stands 43 feet tall, rotating like a giant informatory sign. Champ – as the installation is named – rises above the Hollywood scenery like a monumental representation of the latest wave of female empowerment; a creation by Zoë Buckman, artist, activist, mother.

Writer ANNELI BOTZ Photography PETER KOLOFF

Three weeks earlier, in a light flooded studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

Three weeks earlier, in a light flooded studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York.This is where Zoë Buckman (b.1985) lives and works. Originally from London, she moved to Los Angeles first, and then to New York after falling in love with an American who would become her husband, and with whom she has a daughter. Buckman, now a multimedia artist, activist and female rights advocate, started off studying photography. The shift within her artistic practice, towards different materials and a strong focus on feminism, came rather suddenly at a defining moment in her life. In 2011, Buckman gave birth to her daughter Cleo, but learned, right after the baby was born, that her placenta had begun to deteriorate – a condition that could have lead to the premature death of her child, had the baby not been born on that exact day. After this experience, the artist was immediately urged to create. A day after Cleo’s birth, Buckman took a photo of the placenta, using the only expression she felt comfortable with at the time. “I wanted to capture that specific moment, when this organ had started to deplete. Afterwards, I put the placenta in my freezer, as I was unsure what to do with it,” she recalls. After this somewhat traumatic post-birth experience, Buckman’s mind remained occupied with thoughts of her placenta and the negative potential its depletion could have brought upon her unborn child. “After I put it in the freezer, I could not stop thinking about death and how everything living perishes and everything dies.” The result was Present Life, a plastination of her placenta that now rests, in bright pink, rose and beige colours, in a marble framework. The sculpture’s overly-realistic features play with notions of kitsch, like a modern-day vanitas taken from a Renaissance tomb.

In this sense, becoming a mother not only fundamentally changed Buckman’s life itself, but also her artistic career. Motherhood propelled her to expand from the photographic medium to sculpture, then embroidery, and later, neon. “I just wanted to shackle these labels of being a photographer, I was simply creating and suddenly drawn to all these different disciplines. When I started to use plastination, marble and sculpture in my work, I felt something that I have never really felt in photography. It felt intuitively more natural.”

But how big is a placenta anyway? Apparently, it’s huge. “People come over and see it, ‘cause it is in my studio now, as this plastinated organ, and they are always impressed by its size.” Buckman’s art piece is not only a reaction to her own birth experience, but also a confrontation with an organ that seems strangely stigmatised. “There is a certain

I want you to feel the pressure of perfection that women are thrust into, that we thrust ourselves into.

discomfort in confrontation with the placenta, especially for men, but also women. I tried to be really sensitive with women’s reactions to this particular body of work, as I know that the experience of becoming a mother is so triggering to many. There is a lot of trauma; women who try to have a baby and can’t, women who don’t want to have a baby and feel under threat. It is just a meaty issue in New York, and everywhere else.”

Looking at her work from an art history perspective, Buckman’s style, choice of medium, and the intensity with which she addresses topics of mother- and womanhood, bears a definite similarity to French-American sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) – an artist, when mentioned, who Buckman declares as a great source of inspiration. Like Bourgeois, Buckman uses space-consuming installations, consisting of various textiles, of free-floating dresses, of objects hanging from the ceiling or rising on pedestals, while always returning to an overall symbolism for the female sex, and her challenges and struggles. But whereas Bourgeois was opposed to labeling herself a feminist artist – she said she was still too occupied with exploring her role as a women herself to become a role model for feminism – Zoë Buckman stands with strong determination. “I definitely consider myself a feminist. All the work I make is somehow to do with the female perspective or experience, whether it’s motherhood, reproductive rights, misogyny or marriage – it is all through that lens. I wonder, what does it mean to be a woman today, and what other problems do I hope my work will try and speak to; what issue do I want to provoke discussion about?”

Buckman herself is a petite woman, beautiful and with even features, like she just popped out of a L’Oréal commercial. One could easily underestimate her ability to throw a punch, but the build-up and expression of physical strength have become a fundamental part of her life and work. A few years back, she took up boxing – an exercise that led to both personal growth and creative revelation. “I was training in this boxing gym downtown, four days a week and was really into it. I was working through a lot of my issues and traumas and was learning how to take up space for myself and defend it using my body. I even

learned to stop saying ‘sorry’ so much. Every time I threw a punch and it landed, I would say ‘Oh God, I am so sorry!’ Through that process, I started to generally reflect on the current war on women. So making artwork about fighting seemed like the natural connection here.” Boxing gloves have thus become a recurring motif within her creative practice, symbolising both personal and artistic growth. The first time she used them was in 2015, in a series called ‘Mostly It’s Just Uncomfortable,’ which was the artist’s response to the attack on Planned Parenthood in the United States. Using gynecological and boxing imagery and objects, Buckman wanted to point out the endangerment of a woman’s right to make choices concerning her own body. Then again, the boxing gloves became a substantial part of Let Her Rave, a reaction to John Keats’ poem Ode on Melancholy, which – despite being an admirer of his poetry – appalled Buckman. One line of the poem says: ‘Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows / Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave.’ As a response to the downplay of a woman’s emotionality and her objectification, Buckman created boxing gloves trimmed with vintage wedding dresses and hung them together from the ceiling of the exhibition space.

Looking at them now, the white gloves appear delicately sewn, creating an urge within the viewer to touch them, to feel their smooth surface. They look like a clenched fist, hidden within the soft perfection of silky innocence. “I get these used wedding dresses and I cut them up and I pin them to the boxing gloves. Then I take them to this wedding dress seamstress. My sewing skills, they are fine, but I’m not a professional. With other pieces, I embroider everything by hand and strive for the personal touch, but in this case, I want you, as the spectator, to feel perfection when you see the gloves. You should be struck by their beauty and when you come closer you realise: ‘Oh wow, these are really highly, perfectly sewn, almost obsessively.’ I want you to feel the pressure of perfection that women are thrust into, that we thrust ourselves into. Whether it’s on our wedding day, whether in our marriage, or in life in general. This feeling of ‘I have to be chaste, and white and perfect,’ that’s what I wanted to bring across.”

Back on Sunset Boulevard, Champ, Buckman’s oversized ovary, is making its relentless turns. The installation, which was funded by the Public Art Funds, is a powerful sign for life itself, for sexuality, empowerment and womanhood. It also stands for yet another development in Buckman’s work as a multi-media artists. While textiles have predominated a large part of her artistic practice, she has also, over the years, discovered a preference for working with neon. “I love using neon, it’s very powerful. As a strong light source, it instantly takes up a lot of room. It commands your eye; it draws you in. And you can also make a decision with neon based on the response you want to get. I can use really repellent, very harsh white neon that will almost push you away, or I can use a soft, warm white that creates this healing, beautiful experience. I also like that neon has this little self-life; a bit like my placenta. It is this thing that has its purpose and then it runs out. And when it runs out, it is dead. I love that. ”

Champ won’t be running out anytime soon, but will continue to shed its light over the L.A. sky for at least another year. A period that Buckman, a tireless advocate for conversation and gender equality, will use to engage a broader public. “I really want to use the piece as an opportunity to host discussions, performances and panels. After all, it is a piece in the public realm. So why not build on that and just start as many things as possible?”