

The Art of Menstruation at the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health Series title: "When a woman bleeds it's a act of love."

"Revelation" All photos © 2008 Isa Sanz NEXT page of Isa Sanz 1 2 3 4 The Spanish artist Isa (for Isabel) Sanz writes, This series is named 'MENSTRUAL CONSCIOUSNESS,' it is a photographic work performed in front of a camera, where the blood is the nexus between the individual and the collective experience. The blood in menstruation, usually seen as a taboo, is shown as a sing of beauty and poetry. According to Simon Beauvoir said on her book 'The Second Sex', during menstruation blood represents the essence of femininity. Talking to different people, realized that the way they see these series depends on the viewer and his/her social baggage, and so, meanwhile some people found this project extremely beautiful, others have to confront themselves with their ideas of beauty and horror, concerning the act of bleeding during the menstruation. In 'Revelation' [above] photography the model is not looking to the camera and it represents just the moment, a moment in which the intimated act is shared with the audience in a frontal pose. The view of blood becomes a secondary reading while the strength the poetry and the fragility of the moment is taking part. At first sight the taboo and shock are exposed, explicitly performed for the viewer. We can observe in all the photos that the models are in front of the camera, posing in an advertising or fashion language. However I intended to go deeper constructing new meanings, rather than to show only the surface implicit in the image of blood and the reaction of the viewer exposed to the violation of the taboo. In few words, I intended to explore ideas of emotion and transformation. In 'Alchemy' the girl is posing opposite to the camera but the message which she is writing frontally in the white wall is the punctum, the word amor which means love in Spanish, and it reveals my intentions in this series and my relation with the blood during menstruation, seeing my own blood as a part of a female nature. I try to represent a transformation by using the image of the girl on the photo as an element in which is the blood that flows out from her transforms all the negative established ideas about menstruation, showing what had to be hidden. So building a semantic message for the viewer, that is a positive message that can be read from different angles. In an immunized world invaded by pornographic images of pain, destruction and suffering, I think that these kind of positive ideas have more impact on the viewer than an image of destruction. In the times we are living, a positive message can be more subversive than a negative one. We can perceive that all the photos are connected by the blood, and aesthetically speaking there is a visual progression, from only one woman, then two, three and then a group of females in the series. This goes from the individual experience to the act of sharing the same experience between a group of women: 'my blood, your blood our blood', making a connection with this Luce Irigarayís idea that a woman needs first to explore her link with her own gender to find her way of express herself. Isa Sanz www.isasanz.com myspace.com/menstrualconsciousness

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