Sexuality continues to remain a perpetually fascinating aspect of human nature. We never tire of holding our desires up to the light to examine them. Neither art, literature or song can seem to definitively untangle this intricate web of lust and longing (but it’s fun trying).
New York’s Museum of Sex is an institution dedicated to this compelling pursuit. Their latest exhibition, I Licked It, It’s Mine, is a group show featuring the work of three artists who all explore sex, desire and intimacy. Though working across different mediums, Oh de Laval, Shafei Xia, and Urara Tsuchiya each, in their own ways, make work that comments on the tenderness, thrill and absurdity of our carnal desires.
“All three of the artists are storytellers, with voices that really complement one another,” explains Chief Curator Ariel Plotek in a conversation over email. “I love the relationship between Shafei Xia’s paintings and her ceramic sculptures, how her favourite characters move from one medium to another with the same light touch. Oh de Laval’s stories involve a darker sense of humour, a detached irony that makes them so wicked and clever. Urara Tsuchiya’s storytelling feels more voyeuristic, albeit a view on sometimes surreal scenarios. All three offer novel perspectives on sexual fantasy – with an emphasis on the fresh and fantastical.”
De Laval’s colourful figurative paintings, with their air of faux-naivety, are deceptively deviant. The Polish-Thai artist tells Dazed, “My work is about being female in the modern world, and I often draw from the experiences of me and my friends. It’s important for me to remind society that women can enjoy sex, be nasty, angry, aggressive, mad, and enjoy gore and violence as men do.”
Oh de Laval, “Stocking stealer” (2019), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 23.5 inches.Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody.
One of her more explicit works featured in the show is “The intimacy of knowing how to make someone’s perfect cup of tea” – a portrait of a woman in underwear laying prone over a coffee table surrounded by tea-making detritus. “On first glance, it’s a very straightforward sexual scene filled with multiple details. The Woman (me) is the main subject and the one initiating sex. Women are often shamed for initiating, and I wanted to remind modern young women that there's nothing wrong with it,” she explains.
“Regarding the male figure in this work, we can’t see his face or his full body but we can see his tongue and his penis – two of the most useful appendages for women during sex. In this painting, it was important for me to switch the roles and present a woman as the initiator and dominant figure who is using the man for his two organs and a tea.”
Working in ceramics and watercolours, Shafei Xia subverts the delicacy of rococo multi-tiered cakes, elaborately laid tables and pretty, frilled garters with subtle motifs of exposed breasts and engorged penises. Born in ShaoXing, China, but now based in Bologna, Italy, Shafei Xia is intent on undermining the stereotypes regarding Asian women. She tells us, “From the outside world's perspective, Asian women are more conservative when it comes to sexuality. This exhibition includes three women of Asian descent who unapologetically defy this notion through our work – we follow our nature and create the art that we want to make.”
Urara Tsuchiya, “Bunny knickers” (2023), glazed stoneware, 8.25 x 11.25 x 2 inches.Courtesy of the artist and PARCEL, Tokyo. Photo by Osamu Sakamoto
Urara Tsuchiya is drawn to the agitation of sexual encounters. “I’m interested in the unsettling or awkward moments during interactions that lead to uncomfortable laughter,” she says. “I think anything sexual creates this kind of reaction. I use stories from friends or things that I’ve read or watched as inspiration for my work.” Like Shafei Xia, whose depictions of human carnality also feature animals, Tsuchiya gestures towards beastiality to comment irreverently on the dynamics of our sex lives. “A few examples include having sexual relationships with dolphins, marrying a chimpanzee wife, and Charlotte Rampling having an affair with a chimpanzee in ‘Max My Love’,” she says.
We will never fully explicate the knotty mystery and alchemy of sexuality (and maybe we wouldn’t want to). Or maybe this idea is just part of the grandiose self-mythologising thinking humans love so much, and we’re no more complicated than the bunnies, dolphins and chimpanzees who feature in the artist’s work. “I hope the exhibition paints a rich picture, in which concepts of pleasure and power are as limitless as the artists’ imaginations,” concludes Plotek. “By challenging the commonplace notions of sexual ‘possession’, these artists invite us to rethink who we allow to control our pleasure and its expression.”
I Licked It, It’s Mine is running at the Museum of Sex in New York until January 19, 2024.