Artist Tracey Emin’s infamous bed installation, made in 1997 and sold last year for a whopping £2 million, featured some blood-stained knickers. It’s a shame then, that art can’t defy the time-space continuum and transport the then Tracey to now, because there’s another artist, this time in Karlsruhe, Germany, sticking sanitary towels to things as part of her work.
Elonë Kastratia is 20, and has been putting the sanitary towels around, we figure, to grab people’s attention. While women know exactly what they are (and remember them with a bit of dread), men are probs a bit more like, ‘Um, WHAT?!’ when they see one fluttering on the side of a traffic light pole.
The towels aren’t just up for the sake of it – each one carries a typed message, like a really chewy, cotton-y fortune cookie. One reads ‘imagine if men were as disgusted with rape as they are with periods’ while others say ‘rapists rape people not outfits’, ‘my name is not baby’ and ‘my pussy, my choice’.
Like any bout of internet-propelled activism, the movement has a hashtag, and it’s #padsagainstsexism.
She told Huffington Post: ‘I was waiting for a good moment, and I decided [International Women’s Day] would be the best time to do it. The people on the street looked at it and thought about it! I wanted to make people aware of problems, and I wanted to provoke.’
We figure the delivery of her message – via said pads – is a big ‘fuck’ you to every single person still keen on keeping women’s periods a hidden occurrence, an invisible thing that oh, just 51% of the population goes through every month for most of their lives.
Elonë has blogged, tweeted and Instagrammed her journey of putting the towels up all over the place, but has had some flack – from both sides.
First off, there are some Twitter users upset that she plagiarised one of her bon mots from another user. Secondly, there’s all the usual sexists creeping out of the woodwork to have a go at her for her feminism. Oh, and there’s a few people who think her quest is entirely pointless.
Our opinion? She’s got us talking about the issues, right? Besides, art students have been doing this sort of thing for aeons. Maybe one day, with more projects like Elonë’s, the period taboo will be broken throughout society!
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Ribena Face. Dedicated Towels. And Other Things That Come Up When You Discuss Period Sex At Length
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.