The only baseball cap that fits the shape of the artist‘s head, is of all things, a promotional item emblazoned with the logo of a car manufacturer. Lacking alternatives, Schmid buys it. What initially is a compromise solution, soon becomes the catalyst for an idea. Wearable political messages are not only trendy, above all, they offer the opportunity to performatively transmit into public spaces. With her VULVA CAP the artist Sira-Zoé Schmid places herself into the order of the banal and transforms the body of the wearer into one of protest: the logo of a car brand, pars pro toto for the thrill of speed and male connoted expansion fantasies, becomes a feminist position. In the German-speaking world, the word VULVA has replaced the culturally and historically loaded term ‘Scham’ (shame) as the definition for the female sex organ. It indicates a self-determined female corporeality that withdraws itself from the gaze regimes of the patriarchy as well as from biopolitical access and adjustments. That this cannot be taken for granted has been highlighted by the most recent abortion debates in the US. In the tradition of the feminist avant-garde, Sira-Zoé Schmid displays that the female body is still an amplified battle zone.
In order to draw attention to topics like femicide and abortion rights, the artist donates 40% of all proceeds to two charitable organizations. The association ‘Changes for Women’ and ‘The Autonomous Women’s Shelters Austria’. In collaboration with artists from various fields, such as the musician Samura Loré and the visual artist Xenia Lesniewski, special packages have been put together to give you the possibility to drop an even bigger contribution into the donation pot.
LONG LIVE THE VULVA – www.longlivethevulva.sira-zoe-schmid.com/
