MURCIA. “I don’t know why our boobs are so scary. Without them there would be no humanity and no beauty.” The song ‘Ow mom! with which Rigoberta Bandini revolutionized the Benidorm Fest could well accompany the exhibition project she undertook Murcian artist Sara Arocapreviously under the title The hypersexualization of the female breast. The same one that has now flooded with breasts, not always in the pure Delacroix style, the Sancho de Llamas de Ricote Cultural Center. With this exhibition, moreover, the 60 exhibitions programmed within the framework of the EXE Exhibition Spaces Plan.
“I had to hide to breastfeed my son if he was on the street, as if he were doing something wrong,” says one of the 40 women who have stripped themselves physically and emotionally in this exhibition project, where the paintings demands of Sara Aroca are accompanied by audios where they are collected the opinions and experiences of different women in relation to their breasts. Ccomplexes and insecurities; types of censorship or control; hormone process; decide to reconstruct the breast or not after breast cancer; breastfeeding or how to naturalize this part of the body and free it from stereotypes and prejudices, are some of the topics covered in this exhibition.
Thus, for example, in the audio that accompanies the work Diversity. Reality women talk about their insecurities or complexes due to the socially established chest stereotype, comments they have received or comparisons that are made.
“My husband doesn’t like me to breastfeed in public but I don’t care, because I’m feeding my son and that’s what’s important” or “I had to hide to breastfeed my son if he was on the street, like if I were doing something wrong”, are other comments that can be heard next to the piece Lactation.
Cover-display: control, is another of the works in which two aspects related to control over the female body are reflected upon. On the one hand, you hear opinions from women whose upbringing has led them to believe that wearing cleavage is provocative, sinful, or obscene. On the other hand, some of them confess to wearing a neckline to go out partying because they think that they will like it more that way or because they impose it on them in the workplace to sell more or attract customers. “What do we do freely and why do we do it?” Are the questions that the artist leaves open.
Similarly, in Stop Censorship, the women of the audio give their opinion about the fact that women’s nipples are censored on social networks; about the use of this part of the body in advertising, to sell; or about the existence of interests that decide when and how the breasts can be shown.
For its part, in vestiges The participants tell their experiences and opinions on two topics: the bra and the topless. Some of the comments are: “I didn’t go topless because my partner bothered me”, “I was called out at a concert for staying in a bra, while many guys went shirtless”, “I was so obsessed with what I had to wear a bra that I even wore it to sleep” or “I wear a bra because I have a large chest and it is heavy, but also because it seems that aesthetically my breast shape does not look good without a bra and also, I am embarrassed that my nipples are marked”.
(Re)contruirse is another of the works belonging to the exhibition on the hypersexualization of women’s breasts, in which testimonies are collected about the decision to reconstruct or not the breast after a mastectomy, how they faced it and how they currently feel with that decision . In it, you can see breasts reconstructed with implants, with your own fat, skin graft, nipples with micropigmentation or tattoos, unreconstructed breasts or tattoos on (or accompanying) the scars.
Sara Aroca Costa (Murcia, 1994) is a multidisciplinary artist graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Murcia (2016). At the end of her career, she began to participate in collective painting exhibitions and to investigate in the field of performance, merging painting, music and dance. In the pictorial field, she has created works with different styles, but her main projects have followed a hyper-realistic line focused on transmitting sensations and claiming issues that affect her directly, as a woman born in a heteropatriarchal society and Judeo-Christian tradition.
The exhibition ‘The hypersexualization of women’s breasts’ can be visited at the Sancho de Llamas Cultural Center until March 15, from Monday to Friday, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. 00 hours.
EXE Exhibition Spaces Plan
The EXE Exhibition Spaces Plan is an initiative sponsored since 2017 by the Institute of Cultural Industries and the Arts of the Region of Murcia, ICA, whose purpose is to promote local plastic artists, provide municipalities with the possibility of offering in its municipality a quality cultural program and value the rooms available throughout the Region.
A total of 141 artists have joined the initiative this year and there are 33 participating municipalities. Councilor Marcos Ortuño has pointed out that “the Exhibition Spaces Plan continues to grow in this fourth edition, and acts as a catalyst and disseminator of the interesting work that the creators of the Region have been carrying out.
According to Ortuño, “this plan, endowed with 100,000 euros, affects the regional government’s line of working in collaboration with other administrations, institutions or companies, to provide the Region with a stronger, permanent and quality cultural fabric, in addition to support Murcian creators by helping their works reach more people and facilitating the development of their professional careers”.
To the total number of scheduled exhibitions, a final collective exhibition is added, EXE 2022. A year of exhibitions in the Region of Murciawhich will be at the Víctor Villegas Auditorium and Congress Center in December, with a selection of works by the participating artists.
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