- Brush painting with menstrual blood on watercolor paper
- 80.5 x 67 cm
"On Cloud 9" depicts seven female-read bodies in a floating, seemingly
enraptured visual world. Each figure is on her own cloud, surrounded by
soap bubbles – fragile structures between lightness, projection, and transience.
At first glance, a soft, aesthetic, and almost idyllic
scenery unfolds, evoking romantic ideals, longings, and socially shaped
notions of love and femininity.
However, this surface is deceptive.
In its depths, a field of tension between pain, despair, inner
turmoil, and physical suffering is revealed. The figures serve as examples of the
female experience in a patriarchal context – between emotional injury,
structural disregard, and physical boundary experiences.
The work alludes to the invisibility and trivialization of
menstrual-related complaints & chronic illnesses in medical
discourse, as well as the neglect and disapproval of everything that does not conform to the norm
of stereotypical femininity.
Soap bubbles run through the composition as a recurring motif: They emerge,
carry hope and illusion – and burst. In their fleetingness, they refer to
the failure of promises and ideals of carefree joy, healing, and
romantic fulfillment.
The deliberate use of menstrual blood as an artistic medium transforms
the socially taboo into an act of visualization and
self-empowerment.
The title "On Cloud 9" is deliberately broken in this work. What is commonly understood as
happiness, lightness, and fulfillment becomes an ambivalent projection surface here
– and confronts viewers with the discrepancy between the ideal and
the lived reality of female experience.
