Sweet As Honey

April 2023

After centuries, sex is still taboo globally, and so is female sexuality along with it. As the word Vagina is Latin for sword holder or sheath. The female genitalia is therefore defined according to how it performs in conjunction with a male counterpart. Sweet As Honey is a pentaptych photographic piece intended to illustrate a subversion of the narrative surrounding female pleasure. The main image draws from Renaissance pieces that were more often than not made by men, portraying how they wanted women to be seen. It is reminiscent of similar poses, but rather than draping the woman’s hand across her genitals like the infamous Venus Pudica pose, her hand is pulling the viewer's eyesight to follow. In the history of painting, women’s bodies and sexualities were displayed to please the male gaze. Sweet As Honey replicates similar methods of depicting women, while also demanding the gaze. The woman in these images is not ashamed to be seen in the nude, she wants to be acknowledged for her sexuality. She is inviting observation because the photos are taken up close to her most intimate areas rather than at a distance from across the room. Her posture, shape, and blemishes are not painted over. In this way, the objectification of the woman’s sexuality is reinvented as a subject rather than an object. Honey is an aphrodisiac, and its selection as the substance of choice in these images was deliberate to celebrate the woman’s sexuality. The curation of the images is intended to resemble the reverence reserved for gold-framed masterpieces in a gallery or sacred religious relics, elevating the body and the act of masturbation, long vilified as sinful, into something worthy of honor. By doing so, Sweet As Honey challenges deep-rooted shame and reclaims pleasure as sacred, autonomous, and powerful.