The tradition of “raising the skirt” has its roots as far back as Ancient Greece. In global folklore, the revelation of a woman’s genitals – her cunt – has been thought to calm the forces of nature and drive away evil spirits. In Britain and Ireland sheela-na-gigs (stone carvings of females with exaggerated vulva) were placed above church doorways for precisely these reasons.
Raising the Skirt: Warrior Photograph by Dawn Felicia Knox in collaboration with Nicola Canavan (2014)
For Nicola Canavan, an artist whose work is informed by research into sociological histories of women, abjection and otherness, reclaiming the cunt is a powerful tool. “Wikipedia describes the cunt as ‘as vulgar term for female genitalia’,” she explains. “But the word ‘cunt’ wasn’t always a derogatory term. It once meant ‘skin’, ‘woman’, ‘femininity’ or, more commonly, ‘the female genitals’. The word ‘cunt’ as a derogatory term was born from misogyny, oppression and the fear of female sexuality.”