A feminist statue of a woman urinating does not appeal to everyone. Soon installed in Nantes, it is already creating controversy.
Every year the Voyage à Nantes is organized, a cultural event throughout the city of Loire-Atlantique. This year, a feminist statue created by Elsa Sahal will be installed in the middle of the Place Royale, in the heart of the city center. Not yet installed, the work (which has already been presented and exhibited at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, at the Papillon Gallery, at the FIAC, in Toulouse and at the Maison Rouge in Paris) is already making headlines , and not only good.
The statue, soberly called "Fountain", represents the lower half of a woman, with a vulva well in appearance. It spurts water and, inevitably, it does not please everyone. While those responsible for Voyage à Nantes describe it as a "homage to the figures of triumphant femininity which adorn the 19th century sculptural ensemble of the Place Royale", this provocative work attracts the wrath of the conservatives, reports West France.
On a far right site, Boulevard Voltaire, we take exception to this "hideous form of femininity". "We could suggest that he be inspired by African goddesses with breasts pointing like shells and a prominent belly like the bow of a ship. We could suggest a mother that the son admires. Everything, but not that! All or n anything that marks the power of women, the sole holders of reproductive capacity. (…) There is only a repressed fantasy, in the author, of not being a man. 2020 in Nantes – after FIAC, of course! – lends itself to this exhibition shows a desire to shock without succeeding ", writes the author (a man, if you really need to specify). "The artist sees fit to pay another indirect tribute to the masculinity of the jet as far as possible to show the power of life. Sad idealization of the concept. Sad lowering of women, she shows us here, because of Obviously, no woman can pee like this … And even less compete with the jet of a man ", he continues, seeming to forget that, yes, women too can urinate while standing. Let us recall in passing that "femininity" is not defined by the way of relieving oneself, that each woman has her own femininity and, above all, that she can make her own decisions and do what she wishes without needing to a man's agreement.
Elsa Sahal, she described her work in April 2018 to France Culture, explaining that it was"a pissing figure, the title of which is a snub to Marcel Duchamp's urinal". Nearby Figaro, the artist also pointed out that "in the continuous flow of the urine stream, there was the idea that little girls too can piss thick, far and continuously. And that, ironically, can happen in public space where only urine are admitted! ".
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