Nikolina Brown, Pleasure Flesh, 2019, Terracotta, Dimensions Variable 50cm x 130cm x 18cm, photo: Janelle Low
Our January laurel goes to Nikolina Brown, for a series of sensuous terracotta forms that express female sexuality.
Nikolina Brown explains the process of making this work:
I work with the knowledge that commonly a womxn’s sexual pleasure is placed second to a man’s. Seeing this through porn, sex education and consequently, life. It took me to the age of 21 to find out that “Only about 30 per cent of women orgasm reliably with intercourse […] the other 70 per cent sometimes, rarely or never orgasm with intercourse (Nagoski, E. Come As You Are. 2015)”. The intentions behind Pleasure Flesh were to create a family of objects and vessels inspired by both masturbation and the female body. This body of work is my way of continuing discussions around equalizing the pleasure gap.
I keep all of this in the back of my mind while I create. The social message, as well as the sex toy imagery that I use for inspiration, gets put on the backburner. When I sit down to throw, I forget all research and let my hands decide on the shape of the clay. This allows me to feel less pressured to create, and instead enjoy the clay, to play with it and have fun. It only makes sense that I enjoy the experience and do what feels good to me, when my vessels are a reflection of a similar, bodily, pleasure play. Each fortnight or so I would sit to throw a group of forms, as these were drying to be trimmed, I would work on building a vessel with the previous batch. Laying the pieces out in front of me I picked a starting piece and usually built up from there. Laying extruded coil ropes over the clay and placing another thrown piece on top, dismantling and starting again, adding and removing until the forms in front of me pleased something deep in my core. The decorative coil detailing, along with the lidded vessels were intended to be a clitoris/clitoral hood motif. However, I have noticed my forms being read as having nipples, phallic tendencies and other sexual motifs, which I am embracing excitedly. I believe the more openly we talk about taboo topics, the more normalized they will become. I look forward to a future where womxn’s orgasm is just as important as a man’s is.
Nikolina Brown, Pleasure Flesh, 2019, Terracotta, Dimensions Variable 50cm x 130cm x 18cm (detail), photo: Janelle Low
This is her artistic statement:
I let my subconscious guide me.
The forms I make represent the best kind of play: to masturbate.
Stimulate, flick the bean, beat your meat, polish the pearl; what ever you want to call it; as long as you enjoy it.
My thrown and coiled ceramics communicate how precious self-love is, to normalize sexual expression among womxn. Soft curves, warmly flushed tones, coiled clits and tits come together to represent the feminine, the flush of pleasure and the flesh we use to achieve it.
Nikolina Brown “conducting my material / conceptual research”.
Nikolina Brown can be found on Instagram at @nikolinaceramics or on the web at nikolinaceramics.com/.
