‘Feminam Aspectum: On Female Nudity’ is a photographic exhibition in Paris, France, showing the projects of female photographers working with the notion of women’s nudity.

The representation of female nudity can be traced back to around 30-25,000 BC. This is the date of the tiny statuette popularly called the Willendorf Venus and depicting a corpulent female. Since then, the depiction of female nudity has been developed in sculpture painting, photography, cinema and other visual arts. Historically, with a few exceptions, the nude is mainly a phenomenon of Western art. The nude male and the nude female are treated differently and have different parts to play. For thousands of years female nudity has been created and depicted by men for men, attributing to women’s naked body several roles and meanings: mother/fertility, muse/inspiration for men, whore/sexuality, saint/purity. Scholar and filmmaker Laura Mulvey, in her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), claims that cinematic conventions usually appeal to male heterosexuality – ‘the male gaze’ – presenting female bodies as, primarily, objects of desire. This pattern was adopted by other modern media.

And it is only recently that women are gaining back their nudity, by exploring this phenomenon by themselves with various artistic instruments. Photography, being a very popular, flexible, instant, easy to handle medium has contributed a lot to the appearance of new bodies of work by women artists rediscovering naked female body.

The pioneers of showing naked female body with the means of photography are such women photographers Imogen Cunningham, Anne Brigman, Ruth Bernard. They were the first to liberate a woman’s body from the passive role of the muse, depicting it as an active creator. The depiction of naked body was further developed in works by many feminists and female artists, such as Judi Dater, Francesca Woodman, Anna Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann, Yurie Nagashima.

Despite the long history of representation and being a subject to depict even in the most restrictive societies, nudity still occupies a complicated cultural position. While the naked figure is glorified in art for its symbolic meaning, aesthetic capacity, and emotional significance, nudity – especially female one – is still being tabooed. This is paradoxically true in the era of social media, which on the one hand provide access to all kind of information, but on the other act as a censor, imposing strict regulations on visual representation of naked female body.

Art has often rebelled against the social attitudes of its time and context and it is actually now that we are witnessing the paradigm shift.

‘Feminam Aspectum: On Female Nudity’ showcasing five female artists from different countries aims at introducing ‘the female gaze’ as an alternative to the traditional male one.

Each author seeks to redefine the habitual ways nudity has been depicted. Their images offer unapologetically fresh and honest visual language and very peculiar visions.

Violeta Bubelytė has established herself in the history of Lithuanian photography as a free-standing artist, breaking taboos with her audacious practice. She has been depicting herself nude for almost 40 years, starting in a very restrictive context of the Soviet era. In this exhibition you can see her early photos made during Soviet times, as well as the artist’s recent body of work, together forming the genesis of Violeta’s oeuvre.

Masha Svyatogor explores the continuity of representation of female nudes in the history of arts, covering the faces of her modern times models with reproductions of works by famous artists. Hiding behind such ‘masks’ makes one think about all the social restrictions, making women feel ashamed of their nudity.

Roxy Herve also has this historic continuity, but this time connected to sculpture. While referring to the notion of ideal and even sublime, her statuesque photos of bodies depict female nudity in a completely contemporary way, liberating them, and introducing the idea of a modern goddess.

Nastassia Kit belongs to the generation of young creators. In her dynamic and audacious works she establishes a new type of modern heroine: independent, energetic, daring, active. Her nude female is a self-sufficient heroine of her own.

Tanya Zommer’s series of self-portraits shows us the author in the most sensitive moments, which are mornings, just after the wakeup. The artist here is vulnerable but bold, there is no attempt to hide the truth about the reality of a nude body, that the relentless morning light reveals.

Oksana Veniaminova, curator