As Mummy Buzz, I read a lot of copy and am seldom lost for words. Or at least I was. Until I read about Casey Jenkins, a so-called 'craftivist,' a feminist performance artist from Australia with a penchant for spooling the yarn. Except she doesn't knit in the way you or me or even your great aunt does: she knits from. her. vagina.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, Jenkins' latest work, entitled Casting Off My Womb, involves a month of vaginal knitting.
"I'm spending 28 days knitting from wool that I've inserted in my vagina," Casey explains just so there is no confusion. "Everyday I take a new skein of wool that's been wound so that it will unravel from the centre and I stick it up inside me... and then I pull out the thread and knit."
Jenkins' aim: to nix the taboo surrounding the female genitals. A vulva is just a vulva, she longs to remind us. It's "just a bit of a body. There's nothing that is shocking or scary... nothing that is gonna run out and eat you up."
Jenkins, who describes knitting as occasionally "arousing," plans to knit throughout her period because "the performance wouldn't be a performance if I were going to cut out my menstrual cycle from it."
While we at YMC are all in favour of demystifying female genitalia—right, Jen Warman?—we're pretty sure Jenkins is tying herself in knots with this project. Wonder what her family and friends will make of their Christmas presents this year.
Care to chime in: off her rocker or cutting edge art?
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