I’ve settled on the theme of Sex Work in the city of
Edinburgh. I’ve been thinking about things that maybe represent sex workers and
sex work over the 100s of years its existed in Edinburgh. The street is one
idea, it can represent streetwalking and there’s all these nice old looking
cobbles juxtaposed with yellow lines and mummified chewing gum. I also thought
about condoms which represent more towards the prostitution side of sex work
and shoes because we all know what a ‘stripper shoe’ is and maybe a certain
kind of heel represents a certain kind of woman and is a very feminine thing
itself.
Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese artist who creates these
installations using donated shoes which have a memory attached to them and
links them together with red threat symbolising the path we take through life.
I think there really visually impacting as well as being sad and hopeful and I like
this sort of idea about the footprints we leave as we go through life.
Luz Interruptus used condoms to create big water droplets in
a space that was once a swimming pool, 800 condoms were filled with blue
coloured water to create a sensory experience, this installation was poked full
of holes by children but the artists didn’t seem that bothered about it, it was
supposed to be interactive. From their website:
You can read more about the installation here
I found more condom installations by Christopher Sacre who creates ‘babies’ by pouring plaster into thousands of
condoms each creating a unique squishy looking shape which is given a smooth
bottom to sit on and Bryan McCormack whose Preservation of Life installation at the Pompidou Cente used 80,000 light bulbs covered in coloured condoms as part of the centres AIDS campaign.
