Two feminist PerspEGGtives
I feed myself with eggs. I feed myself with fertility and strength and productivity and richness, I stuff myself with proteins and egg yolks to absorb more vitality. Until I’ve got an idea what to do with them.
The Egg is round, it's a mythological symbol, it's an ancient holder of charged value. It's fragile, fertile, has a nourishing core. It's shell is permeable and it's holding the potential of becoming a living being. It's on the edge between object and subject.
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Ovo-lacto-vegetarians is a category that a lot of Europeans and Americans count themselves to. In India this is a paradox in itself, as eggs are not being regarded as vegetarian. Eggs split identities, value systems, beliefs in health. They stand for boundaries, on which side of the Wall are we talking, watching, standing, positioning ourselves. Breeding eggs, Bleeding eggs out every month. Reproductive systems-organs, womb, chicken coops that are like halls of pain and sorrow.
I never really liked eating eggs. I didn’t like the texture of the white protein of cooked eggs and couldn’t stand the smell of the egg yolk. I never understood why my family celebrated the so called “sunday-egg”, as it would be something special and precious. But I did enjoy the procedure of cooking those sunday eggs for my family. Most of the time the egg got broken while cooking it, as I put the egg into the bubbling boiling water. And if this did not happen, I was always proud. I could feed my family.
Being an intersectional feminist and eating eggs is like being an ovo-lacto-vegetarian in India. It's clashing my own belief system, I'm contradicting myself, making myself guilty, swallowing the ignorance and giving birth to it. Destruction, waste and disrespect, disconnectedness made visible, manifested and embodied with this potential life within my body, in my hand. Since I realized that I have in fact eggs in my body as well, that these eggs expand over my life and that its accelerates in my thirties until the fertility, productivity is over...I call myself an egg-machine. But who to feed with these eggs? What to produce with these eggs?
Still, I'm eating you, I'm longing and desiring you, your fertility, your yolk, I want you inside of me so badly and I'm weak, too weak to say no to you. Even Though, you are not good for me, you make my heart weak, you're clogging my arteries and I'm making artistry in return. This is the least I can do for you to honour you, your service you're giving us my friend.
This year’s duo of Sarah and Diana is a continuation of past encounters, which broach the issue of shared as well as contradicted experiences around femininity, gender-identifications, social requirements and corporeality. Their naked bodies in relation to each other, both as containers as well as vehicles, not only confronts the spectator's gaze with own apprehensiveness, but also shares Sarah’s and Diana’s individual journey to empowerment and self-determination.
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When: September, 7th-10th 2017
Where: CHOUFTOUHONNA International Feminist Art Festival in Tunis, Tunesia
With: Sarah Bouars and Diana Thielen