‘Pages from the Book of Spring’ is a version of ‘Desire Lines’ in which I fuse the abstract vibrator drawings with historical erotica, especially the Japanese Shunga from the Edo and Meiji Period in Japan. The Shunga mainly depicted heterosexual relationships and the lives of the emerging middle class during the 17th -19th century. The ancient collection of books, scrolls and prints were filled with middle class male fantasies that acted not only as an escape from the dreariness of everyday life but also succeeded in eroticizing and normalizing the act of sex. In my drawings, I explore different aspects of this early eastern pornography and re-interpret the images through a feminine assemblage of body and machine. I incorporate these far off cultures into my work as I find the learning stimulating. I call them ‘half learnings’ which allow me to decipher what I know from my own culture and what I acquire from a learnt experience.

Whilst retaining some of its historical aesthetics, I push the boundaries by using unconventional tools, mediums and half abstract forms. The black ink vibrator marks representing female sexual desire and the body, are created with the help of household implements – kitchen scrubbers, brushes and sponge cleaners. These everyday tools signify but at the same time reject feminine ideologies of domestication and the private in an unconventional manner. The physical body in this work does not have its usual form or structure, eliminating its sexual signifiers and challenging notions of the male gaze. Also the female objectifiers are metamorphed into a female / artist, female/assemblage binary purging its usual signifiers.

Through these absurd re-interpretations, I deconstruct historical ideas of eroticism, objectification and sensuality that are the foundations of the act of sex that ultimately subjugate female sexuality. My art breaks these societal norms of female pleasure and reclaims a space for female desires by way of the assemblaging cyborg and regenerates history from an alternative stand point.