Sex in the Renaissance

I’m excited to announce that I won a short-term artist fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC! I’ll be spending a month diving into their archives, researching perceptions of women’s sexual pleasure in the Renaissance through midwifery manuals and medical texts from the period. I'll be rephotographing and transforming text and images from the manuals as part of my larger Erospace project. 

In Erospace, I’m investigating the nature of eros, starting with a focus on women’s desire. I’m interested in questioning larger assumptions about what women want, the nature of our desires, and the continued devaluing of women’s sexual pleasure. And I think it’s really interesting to compare and contrast how women’s sexuality is perceived now with other time periods, and to consider how cultural context affects how we see ourselves.

There is a lot more to share, and I’ll reveal more as I get deeper into my research. I'm also still developing ways to involve the public, the way I always do. So stay tuned...

Yes, I’m Actually Working on a Project about Sex

One thing I can say about working on a new project about sex—you definitely get a reaction! Since one of the reasons I do what I do is to bring new conversations about difficult topics out into the open, it’s been really fun starting to tell people about my nascent project, Erospace. Even though sex is such a primary part of what it means to be human and live in the world, people are still often uncomfortable talking about it. My mom told me after I announced it on Facebook that a friend of hers said she was shocked: “Did you see the new project Mindy is working on?!”, as if my mom didn’t already know, and isn’t one of the reasons why I’m comfortable talking about sex in the first place. Thanks, mom!

A lot is happening around here, as I’m getting Erospace off the ground, and I have some other exciting announcements about another project coming soon. So I’m moving some things around, and I’m excited to announce that I’ve opened up registration for a new, one-time workshop for Erospace this spring. If you live in Toronto and were interested in participating but couldn’t commit to 8 weeks, check out this 3 hour intensive. As part of my research, I'm hoping to do online workshops at some point too, so stay tuned.

Erospace Workshop
Tuesday, April 3, 2018, 7-10pm
Good for Her, Toronto, ON

In this three hour hands-on workshop for women*, I invite you to be my one of my initial collaborators for Erospace. Together, you’ll join me in a variety of artistic experiments and discussion about how we access our sexual pleasure and how that changes throughout our lives.

*includes ciswomen, transwomen, and non-binary folks, no artistic experience necessary.