The Diva by Juliana Notari
Brazilian conservatives lashed out at artist Juliana Notari after she drew international attention by revealing a 108-foot-long vagina sculpture. The giant installation was constructed at a rural art park on the grounds of a former sugar mill in the Brazil state of Pernambuco, according to The Guardian.
Notari posted on Facebook "Amid so many rocks in the middle of this dystopian year, I finally finish the year with Diva ready!! It was a long process, almost 11 months of a lot of persistence, coexistence and learning." She decribes the sculpture as "Land Art, a massive vulva / wound excavation measuring 33 meters high, by 16 meters wide and 6 meters deep [108 feet long, 52 feet wide, 19 feet deep] covered by armed concrete and resin."
"I use art to dialogue with issues that refer to gender issues from a female perspective combined with a cosmopocentric and anthropocentric western society," Notari wrote on Facebook. "Currently these issues have become increasingly urgent. After all, it is by changing perspective of our relationship between humans and humans and nonhuman, that will allow us to live longer on that planet and in a less unequal and catastrophic society."
"Long live the Art Power Plant, this beautiful project coordinated by Bruna and Ricardo that has revived the historic and cultural landscape at this point in the Mata Sul Pernambucana," Notari wrote on Facebook. "Diva is the fruit of my artistic residence in the Power Plant and a covenant of the Art Power Plant and the Museum of Modern Art Aloisio Magalh ãeses (MAMAMAM)."
As The Guardian reported, Notari's Diva sculpture immediately raised the ire of Brazil's conservatives (particularly supporters of the increasingly intolerant Jair Bolsonaro) who responded with angry and often obscene social media posts.
The Artist Juliana Notari
The Brazilian creator of Diva, Juliana Notari, explores art through diverse media (installation, performance, photography, drawing, objects, and videos) in a multidisciplinary approach, according to her website.
Construction of the Diva
Notari wrote on Facebook, "Diva after all is a big hand made sculpture. As Roberto demonstrated, the engineer responsible for the work (and who puts his hand in the mass!), could not use excavator, because she would not allow to accurately carve the reliefs she needed. So it was over 40 hands to make Diva rise, over twenty men working in a heroic effort under the sun to pin, amid a lot of music and joke."
