MASP

Erika Verzutti

Venus Freethenipple, 2017

  • Author:
    Erika Verzutti
  • Bio:
    São Paulo, Brasil, 1971
  • Title:
    Venus Freethenipple
  • Date:
    2017
  • Medium:
    Papel machê e poliestireno
  • Dimensions:
    174 ø x 115 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação da artista, 2018
  • Object type:
    Escultura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.10735
  • Photography credits:
    Eduardo Ortega

TEXTS



Erika Verzutti’s sculptures and installations tend to associate elements such as fruits and vegetables with objects and artifacts of symbolic value, including totems, ritualistic sculptures and headstones. Her method starts with making molds and replicas of real things, which the artist modifies by adding and modifying material layers. Verzutti developed a line of sculptures that relate to the theme of the Paleolithic Venus, creating upright figures that evoke the female body or phallic forms with a palpable erotic charge, leveling a good-humored critique against the dominant ideal of feminine beauty running through art history. Commissioned by MASP for the exhibition Histories of Sexuality (2017), Venus Freethenipple refers to the emblematic Willendorf Venus (25.000 to 20.000 BC), housed at the Naturhistorisches Museum [Natural History Museum] in Vienna—a Stone Age fertility symbol represented by the childbearing physique and voluminous breasts. Verzutti’s sculpture, made in papier-mâché and polystyrene, copies the texture of the limestone original, and evokes the different segments of the body in fruit-and-vegetable representations: a jackfruit for the lower limbs, a large pumpkin for the hips and abdomen; and a towering asparagus for the upper body and head. The title suggests a direct relationship with the international feminist movement Free the Nipple, which campaigns for sexual freedom and gender equality, with activists going topless in public to question why women’s naked breasts aren’t treated as naturally as men’s chests.

— Camila Bechelany, 2018

Source: Adriano Pedrosa (org.), Pocket MASP, São Paulo: MASP, 2020.



Search
the collection

Filter your search