This installation is made of two rooms, closed off from one another. One for the parents, and one for the children. They serve as a psychological case study, one that draws from her own childhood but also one that is confusing enough that the viewer isn’t able to draw any certain conclusions, just get a picture of her trauma and pain. The overwhelming red of the rooms and the objects in them immediately brings up a sense of blood and violence, the conclusion that this was not a happy home. There are also symbols of sexuality between the parents, and the fact that sexuality was still a mystery to the children. This kind of discomfort is used to introduce the viewer to a new environment, one that is informed by Bourgeois’ past experiences and mental struggles.

This was a large-scale sculpture exhibit of a woman laying on her back. Viewers would enter the sculpture through an opening at the vagina, and then could explore the inner rooms, or cathedral space, of the woman. This was a radical celebration of femininity and sexuality, but clearly discomforting at first glance to be exposed to female genitalia and form in extreme scale. The discomfort is only an initial impression, as the purpose of the sculpture is to get over the initial discomfort and celebrate the female experience. The sculpture was metaphorically a mother goddess, and the viewers were “reborn” when exiting the exhibit, symbolizing their renewed appreciation for the significance of womanhood.

This was an experiment in creating a male alter ego by wearing a mustache, afro wig, and sunglasses. She was an alternate being who had her own history but looked different to the public, and would adopt a stereotypically masculine personality and see how others treated her differently. This directly threatened stereotypes and made the audience uncomfortable because they saw how different a person was treated just by their perceived gender. This piece also included photos of her with text bubbles inserted, such as one that read “I embody everything you most hate and fear.” The general society at the time didn’t want to talk about gender or race, so she forced them to confront the problem with this conceptual art piece.

As a lighter skinned African American, Piper used this card to confront racism that she experienced. She would hand this out to people around her who said racist things, and the card would alert them that she was black and that their marks had offended her. Easier ways to deal with racist remarks could have been to ignore them, but she purposefully created an uncomfortable situation in order to lead others to realize that their racist ways were affecting her and others. She ends by passive-aggressively apologizing for the discomfort, but this discomfort is the purpose of this exercise.

Interview with Adrian Piper

This image of a woman licking an ice cream cone is a critique by Axell of the way that pop art had been used for objectification of women in the past. Here, the only parts of actual skin that we see are the woman’s hands and face, although the overall image presents an incredibly sexual tone, one of personal gratification. The woman here is in charge and sexually liberated, taking back sexuality for women and celebrating it. Axell strikingly creates a purposeful discomfort by displaying a sexual act in a way that isn’t objectifying the woman, confronting the objectification of women and the societal tendency to present a woman’s sexuality as passive.

In this short film, Mendieta experiments with her own naked body in conversation with a landscape, lying on the ground and letting her body vanish and her remaining silhouette become filled with blood. This is an exploration of her connection to nature and her lack of belonging, parallel to her history of being ripped from her homeland of Cuba as a child and placed in an orphanage in Iowa. She also explores returning to the maternal source, or the earth that she came from, as a way of celebrating feminitity. Her body becomes an extension of nature and vice versa, prompting conversations of the female gender and its stereotypical connection to nature. The discomfort and grotesqueness of these images with the bloody silhouette and the sense of violence that come with it are used effectively to present the viewer with an unfiltered story of her displacement and the pains of her experience.