While researching Art work, revolving around the vagina Dentata myth I was shown Fee for Service by Jess Dobkin.
This is a performance piece, where the artist has inserted an electric pencil sharpener into her vagina.
She then invites people to buy a pencil and sharpen it in her very own vagina Dentata.
Although they are inserting the pencil into her vagina an effigy of a vagina conceals it.
The experience is a very intimate one, the inserter, is ushered behind a curtain where only they and the artist are curtained off in a section of the room.
The participator then pulls away her gown to reveal the Dentata, the artist then helps the participant sharpen their pencil, this being a very intimate action.
The artist to me appears to have sexualized this myth and made it seem erotic by the low red light and the one on one behind a curtain. The dialect from the artist is very flirty.
This interpretation of the myth very much reminds me of a quoye I previously used by Ducat: “these myths express the threat sexual intercourse poses for men who, although entering triumphantly, always leave diminished” the artist comes off as the dominant part as she has taken part of you’re pencil and you cannot retrieve it as she has, in essence ingested it.
Fee for Service, Jess Dobkin, WARC Gallery, Toronto, Canada In this video Bark News reporter Ryan Ringer uses Jess Dobkin’s vagina to sharpen his pencil.
