JESUS’ VAGINA graduation project
Project details
- Programme
- fashion-design
- Practices
- autonomous
- Minor
- Critical Studies
Jesus’ Vagina by Rosa Meulenbeld
A digital collection that celebrates the grotesque body.
“The grotesque body is the open, protruding, extending, secreting body, the body of becoming, process and change. The grotesque body is opposed to the classical body, which is monumental, static, closed and sleek, corresponding to the aspirations of bourgeois individualism; the grotesque body is connected to the rest of the world.”
Female Grotesques: Carnival and Theory, by Mary J. Russo, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 1985.
Graduation project
This project is called Jesus’ Vagina. A digital collection that consists of five chemises. The collection is fully digital, digitally shot and animated. Its goal is to free and celebrate the grotesque body and to question Western beauty-ideals.
The grotesque body and its lower abdominal stratum were the core of West-European medieval carnival. It served as a symbol for tearing down the ruling system and giving birth to a new one (in which the womb and its ability to give birth, but also the intestines and their ability to process food played a central role).
For this project I researched West-European medieval carnival. This topic fascinates me because it shows the human need to celebrate and question existing systems. The connection between medieval carnival and the punk movement is uncanny: both idealize deconstruction, question society and aspire to tear it down – in order to make way for one that actually serves the lower and middle class. I collected used materials, deconstructed them and digitalized them to design new garments.
I chose the chemise as my base because of its heterogenerous aspects and its connection with medieval folklore. During this research I discovered the chemise cagoule, a chemise that has a slith right where our genitals are. Catholics used these chemises cagoules in the middle ages to hide their bodies during intercourse. By using the chemise cagoule as inspiration for Jesus’ Vagina I aim to free the body, instead of capturing it.
The animated chemises: https://www.studiomeulenbeld.com/videonoof
All fabrics in these digital chemises are based on existing fabrics. The fabrics that I used could no longer be used for up- or recycling.
By digitalizing them I gave them “eternal life”.
Illustrations are always the starting point in my process, whether I design a digital work or not.
(Fashion) history and social issues are always the core of my projects. Digital art and fashion design allows me to bring these topics into the 21st century context. Interested in this or other projects? Don’t hestitate to contact me!
