S.O.S. Starification Object Series,

1974

An influential second-generation feminist artist, Hannah Wilke produced sculptures and performances that probed the relationship between aesthetics, eroti­cism, and politics. She began her career as a sculptor, utilizing both conventional and unorthodox materials, from ceramic and porcelain to bubble gum, pencil erasers, Play-Doh, laundry lint, and cookie dough. Her sculptures evoke both the body and the natural world, as seen in <em>Untitled</em>, whose delicate folds recall seed pods, shells, and flowers, as well as female genitalia, a symbol of female empowerment commonly employed by feminists. Such works also speak to contemporaneous developments in sculpture, particularly process-based, post-Minimalist sculpture, christened by the critic Lucy Lippard as "eccentric abstraction." <em>S.O.S. Starification Object Series</em> represents one of Wilke’s earliest experiments with performance. A deeply ambiguous work, it embraces sensuality at the same time that it mocks male desire and satirizes gender stereotypes. Wilke’s pose recalls that of a pin-up. The aura of impeccable glamour she projects, however, is disrupted by the pieces of gum — chewed and kneaded to resemble vulvas — that mar her otherwise flawless back. According to the artist, these "wounds" symbolized women’s second-class status, their ­"disposability." They might also allude to Christian stigmata or the scarification rituals of tribal cultures. The work’s title is rife with contradictions: it blurs the distinction between "stars" and "scars," suggesting that glamour is inextricable from injury and female beauty from distress.