Waging a Word War

In this series of drawings, domestic animals function as signifiers for aspects of women’s experience in western culture. The drawings refer to a cultural linguistic practice that objectifies and dehumanizes women by selectively positioning them in the animal realm, over which man considers himself to have authority. Women are reduced to isolated fragments of the self and filtered through a misogynistic male gaze. Women are critiqued, labeled and deemed sexually desirable or not based on their body type, their genitalia, their facial proportions, their scent, their leg length, their passivity or assertiveness, all of which are crudely paralleled, through language, with animals.

The visual inclusion of text in these drawings directly addresses this cultural subversion of language. With text and image juxtaposed, the intent is twofold.  First, to reinforce and reclaim the original meaning of a particular word, whether it stands alone or is part of a larger text; and second, to critique and deconstruct the disparaging linguistic parallels drawn between woman and animal.  Occasionally, the double meaning of a word is embraced and used to transform a negative reference into a positive statement of women’s strength, power, and sexuality. The power of language (as written and spoken word) to both reflect and influence cultural attitudes is profound, and the ease with which language can be manipulated and subverted demonstrates its essential inadequacy as a purveyor of precise meaning and its potential as a weapon of discrimination and divisiveness.