The Lady Garden: What are you so afraid of?

What are you so afraid of?

The Lady Garden returns in a winter special for your desexualised-objectified-viewing pleasure.

The Lady Garden is a performance installation of live naked women that challenges HOW you look at bodies, primarily the bodies of women.

What are you so afraid of? What is it about the naked form that is so discomforting and frightening? The nude/naked/unclothed form is here to strip back all signifiers to confront you with the potential for desexualising women.

Being looked at is a powerful act, and sixteen women will present their bodies as various kinds of objects - a flower to be watered, a lampshade to be turned on or off, a writing desk, a food platter, and more – to ask you to acknowledge that we are shown sexually objectified women everyday and to see if you can readdress and renegotiate that lens.

An important feature of The Lady Garden, is intersectionality; that a wide range of women are asked to participate. Being able to ask “where are all the women of colour/older women/women of size/transwomen?” is part of the dialogue this work creates.

In the wake of the Roastbusters scandal and the reaction to Labour’s so-called ‘man-ban’, misogyny, rape culture and the policing of women’s bodies clearly still exists in New Zealand, and this work challenges how we look, judge and consume women’s bodies.

The Lady Garden was last performed in Auckland in August 2013 as part of The Porn Project, a fringe art campaign to get people talking frankly about porn in a sex-positive, misogyny- and racism-negative way.

The Lady Garden
Wednesday 20th – Saturday 23rd August 2014, 5-8pm
Understudy bar, BATS Theatre
corner of Cuba and Dixon Streets, Te Aro, Wellington
Koha entry

ENDS

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