
The inside of a leatherback turtle’s mouth

Damien Hirst

“Vicky Hodgett, Susan Frazier and Robin Weltsch’s Nurturant Kitchen featured “Eggs to Breasts”, a pink kitchen with walls covered in breasts, evokes woman as a feeder in the heart of the house. Woman feeds with her kitchen, feeds children with her breasts and feeds man with her body. Culturally propagated stereotypes of womanhood are obsessively repeated in the kitchen – the colour pink and breasts.
Rather than celebrating these feminine attributes, a claustrophobic and surrealist cavern is created, reminiscent of Bourgeois’s grotesque, anthropomorphic body parts, and Yayoi Kusama’s repetitive dot works, which symbolised her decent into madness. The approximation of eggs and breasts also suggest a woman’s reproductive capabilities and thus her primary function, as well as a shortened evolutionary path – from egg (a foetus) to breast (a mother).”

Snake — Yayoi Kusama, 1974
Mixed media
30.5 x 650.2 x 25.4 cm / 12 x 256 x 10 in
Private Collection, USA © Yayoi Kusama Courtesy of Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco Photo: Michael Bodycomb, New York