Sometimes it gets wild out there! Umeå is inaugurating the Umeå 2014: European Capital of Culture this weekend and it started off with a aggressive situation. The graffiti artist Carolina Falkholt was working on a piece that will be part of the inauguration festivities, when a man comes up and screams at her and pushes her (she even claims he hit her). There was probably some misunderstanding that led to this incident, but still it ended up too violently. And the artist's work have been discussed in local media during the week, as well as in national media for some months —why? Because she is a graffiti artist and (among other things) paints vaginas.

Oh the horror! The vulgarity! And you know what, she even does it at schools so teenagers can see them! For ages the female genitalia have been both exposed and obscured, in art and in real life. It is connected to (male/heterosexual) sex and lust and because of this considered filthy (men can even catch nasty diseases from them). But it has also been part of the modern women's movement with artists like the American Judy Chicago (see her famous Dinner Party: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/home.php) . It was a way of gaining control over your own body and its symbolic interpretations. In so many cultures words for female genitalia are still used for cursing, blaming and shaming.

I see Carolina Falkholt's art, here represented by a photo from an installation at Gothenburgs Art Museum called Matrialutmattning from 2011, as part of this tradition of empowering women's bodies and female experiences. She uses an art form that is beginning to be accepted by the art world, but not in society where it is still mostly connected to vandalism. She both questions the heterosexual norms that corners the nude female body to exclusive sexual interpretations, and depict new erotic images. Falkholt's art is not safe and not everybody will like what she does, but please, stay off the violence!