Hannah Wilke
1940–1993

With Wilke creating a sensuous pose, looking at the camera over her shoulder, S.O.S. Starification Object Series (Curlers), one image from the series, could be mistaken for a women’s beauty advertisement; however, the seductive nature of the image is negated by the unseemly vaginal forms stuck to her forehead, cheeks, and chin. The title of the series refers to both the Morse code distress signal and to the starring role in which the artist places herself as the object of the camera’s focus. It is also a word play, a pun on scarification, referring to ancient tribal rituals and the complicated relationship between pain, disfiguration, and contemporary notions of female beauty and power. Wilke’s work gained attention amid the feminist movement of the 1970s, yet it also became the target of feminist disdain. Her highly erotic self-portraits were seen by some as reinforcing the very objectification of women that she set out to challenge. In response to the criticisms, Wilke created a poster featuring a photograph from the S.O.S. series framed by the text “Marxism and Art: Beware of Fascist Feminism,” which she hung throughout SoHo in New York on the opening night of a solo show of her work in 1977.