Founds objects and Menstrual Blood in the Works of Contemporary Female Artists

Abstract

This article aims to study 5 artworks that utilized menstrual blood and found objects as elements to signify gender issues. By studying the way each artist collected her own period, found objects and other materials and analyze how they are deliberately composed to form a work of art based on each artist’s distinctive socio-cultural context. 3 main points could be concluded as follow. First, all artists intentionally used her own period as an element which male artists cannot produce or do not want to acquire. Second, the artworks invite the audiences to reconsider the system of the social world established mainly by male dominance in the past. This system in which high-low, clean-dirty values was established. Because of menstrual blood female was pushed into the low and dirty zone. Third, as art element, the menstrual blood and found objects used by these artists had expanded the art horizon beautifully. The artworks successfully invited the audiences to imagine the possibilities of art elements and how more important issues could be communicate in the next future.