Untitled

(left) Mithu Sen’s untitled teeth sculpture brings to mind the myth of vagina dentata or the ‘toothed vagina’. Expressing man’s fear of castration during the act of copulation, this myth warns of the dangers of sex with women. Confronted with the sculpture, viewers enter a psychological state similar to the fearful men as they watch this female orifice fraught with jagged threats. Sen uses wit as she takes the ultimate male horror to the point of absolute nightmarish hysteria only to hold it up to the audience as a sculptural frieze.

(Right) In these works, Mithu Sen flouts our notions of not only ‘good woman’ but also of ‘good art.’ Her aggressive sexual imagery is kitschy, garish, and plagiaristic, collaging ready-made fabric and pictures with drawings of her own. What appears to be a crisis in aesthetic taste, however, allows the artist to address a crisis in social norms. Sen uses erotic symbolism to address the subject of power. Her work is about the desire for pleasure and the impossibility of avoiding danger. We see sex not only as pleasure, but ultimately as the pleasure that men and women take in inflicting pain on each other.