A naked look into the world of Sarah Lucas

I recently visited the Sarah Lucas exhibit titled NAKED EYE in Kiasma, which will be on display until 8.3 (so if this article piques your interest, you still have time to check it out!).

Sarah Lucas is a British modern artist known for her exploration of gender roles through suggestive, sometimes straight-up crude art. She uses both sculpture and photography in her work.

This was my first time viewing her art, and I wasn't sure what to expect. As I first walked into the exhibition hall and came face to face with a giant penis, my initial reaction was discomfort. However, the more I explored the exhibit, a collection of many decades of work, the more I felt I was starting to get it.

Sarah Lucas parodies sex and bodies in her art which draws focus to breasts, vulvas, and penises. Her portrayals both simplify and distort bodies in a way that made me feel, as stated, uncomfortable, even disrespectful for looking at them.

Her sculptures feature women who are barely human, with big, sagging breasts, long noodle legs in stilettos, crumpled torsos – and instead of a head, more boobs. This feels very clearly like a commentary on the sexualisation and objectification of female bodies. When you look at the names of the sculptures, it becomes even more obvious that she's satirizing various female archetypes.

These figures are positioned in ways that are sexy yet parodied in a pointedly unsexy way. She takes the sex out of sex.

 She also plays around with yonic and phallic objects. The exhibit features buckets, opening towards the viewer, cigarettes poking out of, or into, a woman's backside, fish, grapefruits, bananas, cucumbers and long, penetrating led-lights that both draw the gaze and cause the viewer to avert it.

Many of the artwork feels dehumanizing and disgusting – but that, in my opinion, is what makes it good art. Art is meant to invoke feelings, and those feelings don't only have to be positive. Art can also be about giving us a space to sit with, and examine, our own discomfort, hate and judgment.