A case for cliteracy | Sophia Wallace | TEDxSalford

Sophia Wallace talks about 'Cliteracy', a critically acclaimed project addressing citizenship and body sovereignty using the medium of text-based objects, unauthorized street installation and interactive sculptural forms.

Sophia Wallace is an American conceptual artist and photographer. Through the use of images, video and mixed media, she explores alterity. Wallace’s focus is how otherness is constructed visually on the gendered, sexualized, racialized body. Wallace has presented her work in major exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, including Kunsthalle Wien Museum, Art Basel Miami, Scope NY, Taschen Gallery and Aperture Gallery among others. She was awarded PDN's Curator Award, Critic's Pick by the Griffin Museum, American Photography AP-25 and ArtSlant's Showcase Award. Her work has been reviewed in BLOUIN Art Info, The New Yorker, Salon, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Hyperallergic and Bitch Magazine, among other publications.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Hello, Manchester.
I'm so happy to be here.

(Responses) (Cheers)

My name is Sophia Wallace.

I'm an artist.

And I'm here today
to share with you a project

that I hope will empower you personally,

and by extension those that you love,

especially if they have a clitoris.

(Cheers)

(Laughter)

To make this work,

I have to talk about
independent female desire.

I have to speak about a universal taboo -

female genitals.

This is not easy.

It taints the speaker.

I want to thank TEDxSalford

for having me here
and hosting this conversation.

All bodies are entitled
to experience the pleasure

that they are capable of.

This is a core pillar of cliteracy.

In making this work,

I had to say that the clitoris,

first, as an organ, has a right to being,

and that this right
is not just about not being cut off.

Sadly, to this day,

over a 140 million women

have had their external
clitorises cut off.

This doesn't make it
into the news very often,

and this doesn't come up
in foreign policy discussion.

So number one,

the clitoris has a right to exist,
free of harm, like any other organ.

But secondly, I argue with cliteracy

that the clitoris has a right to pleasure,

and this is part
of its primary right of being.

How is it possible
that we landed on the Moon

and walked around 29 years

before we discovered
the anatomy of the clitoris?

(Laughter)

We actually cloned sheep,
identified the Higgs boson particle,

and only discovered
the clitoris 29 years ago.

Unfortunately, this discovery
has not been adopted,

so most people don't know
the actual anatomy of the clitoris.

The clitoris is not a button.
It is an iceberg.

Like many in the room
who are hearing this for the first time,

I was shocked to find out

that I didn't know the actual anatomy
of half of the population,

that I didn't know my own anatomy.

In fact, the clitoris is not a button,
it is like an iceberg.

Most of the organ is internal.

This slide is an anatomical example

of the penis and the clitoris
side by side.

Now, we've all been taught

that male bodies
and female bodies are opposites:

the male body sort of sticks out,
the female body is solely internal.

Well, in fact,

there're so many similarities
between the penis and the clitoris.

So, if you'll see,

both the glans and -

The glans of the penis
and the glans of the clitoris -

both organs have a glans.

There are 3000 nerves
in the glans of the penis.

There are 8000 nerves
in the glans of the clitoris.

Both organs have a corpus cavernosum.

Both organs have crura,
like two little legs or wings.

Both organs have bulbs of erectile tissue.

Both organs get erect.

The penis is outside of the body mostly,

and the clitoris
is inside the body mostly.

That's the biggest difference.

In fact, they're very similar.

Actually, fetuses have the same tissue,

and in boys it develops as a penis,
in girls it develops as a clitoris.

Some people have small penises,
some people have very large clitorises.

If one has a clitoris
and takes testosterone,

their clitoris can expand.

What I'm saying is that
these organs are actually quite similar.

And, while we are different,
while we are unique as men and women,

our differences
are not a sign of opposition.

In fact, we're related to each other,
we're connected.

And that's an exciting fact.

With cliteracy, I started with language.

Language has been a place

that so much of sort of
the division of men and women

and the subjugation of women has been
entrenched with the language itself.

'Vagina' - the single most misused word
in the English language.

This is one of the laws of cliteracy.

It's intentionally hyperbolic.

But unfortunately, it's more true
than I wish it was.

'Vagina' is a Latin word.
It means 'sword holder'.

(Laughter)

Vagina, medically, technically,
only includes the opening.

This term is used almost universally
in doctor's offices.

It's also used in feminism
to sort of advocate.

But it's a term that ignores the clitoris,

which is the female sexual organ.

And secondly, it reduces the female body
to being a receptacle, a sword holder.

If you want to use a term
that addresses all the female genitals,

both the reproductive
and the sexual parts of it,

the word is 'vulva'.

This is a word that almost no one uses,

but this is the word if you want to
talk about female genitals - vulva.

If you want to talk about pleasure,
'clitoris' is the term.

The clitoris is both
internal and external.

So, when the clitoris is engaged,

internal stimulation feels great.

If the clitoris is not engaged,
it can feel not great,

or it can feel painful.

It's all about what's happening
with the clitoris.

If it was about the vagina,

there would be so many nerves
that childbirth would be impossible.

There're very few nerves in the vagina.

All of the nerves inside
are from the internal clitoris,

which gets stimulated
both from external and internal portions.

With cliteracy I felt that -

Yes, language has been this way

of restricting and confining
the female body,

but if language can do these thing,

it can also liberate,
it can also be expansive.

It's also an opportunity to come together.

And so I sought to use language
as a way to shift the discourse

and create new space and more alignment.

With cliteracy,
I first began with the term,

and then a definition of the term,

and then an eye chart.

The aesthetics of this project

were also extremely
important and intentional.

I avoided any kind of pink and purple;

I didn't use flowers;

I didn't use any fabric or yarn,

anything soft and fluffy.

I also didn't make any small works
that you could hold in your hand

or eat off of like plates.

I also intentionally avoided
any kind of sexual imagery,

any kind of graphic, close-up,
literal depictions.

I think that everywhere we see
the exposed female body,

and yet we don't know the actual
female sexual organ, the clitoris.

So showing it is not the point, right?

Understanding it is the point.

Literacy of it, knowledge
of it is the point.

[The hole is not the whole]

(Laughter)

The hole is not the whole.

With cliteracy I had a lot of fun
with word-play.

There was just so much
material to work with

and so much to talk about.

I also am making
the radical claim with cliteracy

that we can't truly be free

if our bodies are assailed.

We can't truly be fully
enjoying our democracy

when half of the population

can't speak about their own body,
is censored when they say the words

because these words are taboo,

or are regularly having sex
without orgasms.

And we don't talk about this.

I'm making the radical claim
that freedom in society

can also be measured
by the distribution of orgasms.

This could be one indicator that we use

when we look at education,
access to health care,

economics.

We could also say: How
are orgasms being distributed?

That tells us something about a society.

There is no lack.

Truly.

Freud invented the paradigm
of the phallus versus the lack.

He said that men have the phallus,
they have the penis, they have agency;

women have a lack,
they have a vagina, they have a void.

In fact, Freud was wrong,

the vagina is not the female
sexual organ, it is the clitoris.

There is no lack, none of us have lack,
none of us are lacking, we're all whole.

And none of us need to be depicted
in terms solely of a void.

[Girls are taught it's normal
for sex to hurt. Phallusy.]

In many ways, all of us have had
a psychological clitoridectomy

because the clitoris is never taught.

In sex education it is taught that
boys are both sexual and reproductive,

boys have erections, boys have wet dreams,

boys ejaculate,

and then the semen fertilizes the egg.

Girls, we're taught,
have reproductive organs,

they menstruate, menstruation is painful.

Girls should not get pregnant
if they don't mean to.

Girls should not get
sexually transmitted diseases.

We never learn about the clitoris.

We never learn that girls have desire,

that this is natural,

that girls have sexual dreams,
that girls have fantasies.

So already, as a culture,
I would say we all have clitoridectomies.

'Clitoris, say my name, say my name.'

I really enjoyed using word-play

and putting the clitoris
into popular culture and song lyrics.

So much of popular culture, music -
the female genitals are kind of riffed on

but almost always in a negative way.

If you want to humiliate a man,

call him a word
for female genitals, right?

But this is also an opportunity,
you can just pop in the clit,

and suddenly the whole song changes;
it's very powerful.

So, this is a Destiny's Child song,

there're many more
in the Laws of Cliteracy

like 'Ain't no half-stepping to the clit,'

'Sleeping on the clit? That shit cray',

which it is.

Here's an example from looking below
at the 100 Laws of Cliteracy.

So this work spans 13 feet long
by 10 feet tall.

It dwarfs anyone's body.

When I first showed this work,
I had no idea what the response would be.

Of course, I was hoping
it would be positive,

but I didn't know.

And I have to say, I was overwhelmed
with the way audiences responded.

They really wanted
to have this conversation.

They would stay with the work
for 15 minutes.

I would come back,
they would still be there,

they would have friends with them.

And I felt like this work was needed.

I was invited to speak about it a lot,

and I was also contacted privately.

People shared secrets with me,

people told me for the first time
they didn't feel ashamed about their body,

or they went home with this knowledge

and are having a great time
with their girlfriend,

and wanted to thank me for that.

So this was extremely gratifying.

I think for me, what made me feel
like I was onto something

was that such a diverse group of people
supported this project:

men and women, young and old,
religious and secular, queer and straight.

So many people came together
to support this project.

And I was contacted by people
from as far as New Zealand, Egypt, Brazil,

saying: 'How can we help you
with this project?

Can you translate this project
into Arabic or into Portuguese,

like, we need this here in our country.'

I wanted cliteracy to go everywhere,
but I didn't know how to do that yet,

and I'm still figuring that out.

But I know that it's needed.

And I know that it can't just stay
within the walls of the art world.

I don't consider myself a street artist,
but I began making work on the street

for the same reason
that I think a lot of artist do -

I wanted to communicate more broadly.

This is an example from a documentary
of just me putting up some pieces.

These are prints
that I made on a news print,

then I'm putting them up with wheat paste
just like old posters were put up.

I'm just doing this in Brooklyn.

Some people like to do street art
at the night time,

I do it in the day
because I feel like it's a little safer,

the anonymity of the crowd in New York.

So far so good.

And one of the cool things
about doing street art

is that people will comment on your work.

Sometimes they cross it out or destroy it,

but other times
they put their art on top of it.

And in this case that happened.

Again, like when I showed
the work in the gallery,

on the street there was a big response,

people would photograph it,

they would post it
on Twitter and Instagram.

And it felt like I was talking
about something

that needed to be talked about,

that the project was needed
and people were grateful to find it

and to keep pushing it out there more.

Doing the street work emboldened me
to take on even crazier ideas

that I never thought
I would find myself doing.

And I actually, together with an artist
named Clit Eastwood, or Ken Thomas,

held the world's first-ever
clit rodeo last summer.

We created a rideable golden clit.

(Laughter)

And we held the first clit rodeo.

And, you know, there
were two rules to the rodeo.

Basically, one: respect the clit.

Respect it.

Two: have fun.

Those were the rules.

We had so many riders who wanted to ride,
more than we could host for our event.

But the riders were judged
on three categories:

dexterity, style and generosity.

And they were really
good riders, I have to say.

I was worried that it might
get a little boring

because as you saw on the previous slide,
it was just a spring.

But people were reading
erotica to the clit,

someone did a striptease for the clit,
someone surfed the clit,

someone offered a cigarette to the clit,
and then, like -

There was a couple where
the woman was nine-months-pregnant;

she was riding,

and her husband was in the background
as her backup dancer, dancing around ...

So, it was way better
than I ever expected.

I just was thrilled because
the clit was the star of the show.

Finally!

I've always wanted cliteracy
to be in the public space,

to be at large scale,
to be seen over time,

not to have to be hidden away
or be a secret.

And I had the opportunity last fall.

Together with Center and Santa Fe we
put up a 35 feet billboard of cliteracy,

or 11 metre billboard.

The text says:

'Democracy without cliteracy - phallusy'.

And I was thrilled to do this,

especially because where it was
on this highway

is travelled by such
a broad range of people,

from long-haul truck drivers
to art collectors and everyone in between.

The billboard company
was a little bit less psyched

about how much feedback
they got about the billboard,

but I thought this was great.

A lot of people were like:
'What are you selling?

I don't understand.'

I actually got a call that I'll never
forget from a mom, saying:

'I have to drive this route
with my son every day,

and I don't know what to tell him.'

But I was thrilled because she's going
to talk to him about cliteracy,

and this is something
that he needs to know about.

Cliteracy needs more than text though,

and I always knew that
I wanted to explore the form as well.

None of us know this form, right?
I didn't know this form.

So I set about making

the world's first anatomically correct
sculpture of the clitoris.

And this was something
that was actually quite hard to do

because there are so few accurate
representations of the anatomy.

And when you find
these very few drawings or scans,

they contradict each other,
they don't make sense.

So, it was actually not that easy to do,
but I set about making this form.

With the form I wanted to not only
explore the anatomy and get it accurate,

but I also wanted to show
the gesture of beauty of this organ

and the gracefulness of it.

Here is the first sculpture that I know of
of the anatomically correct clitoris.

It's six feet tall and five feet wide.

And I wanted to create an iconic form

of this unseen organ half of us have,

all of us were born through the body
of someone that has a clitoris.

Everyone in this room was born through
the body of someone that has a clitoris.

So all of us have been touched
by the clitoris.

This is universal
and yet we don't know about it.

So I wanted to create
an iconic form that's memorable,

that puts this into our consciousness.

And I hope that finally this form
would be treated with honour and respect

and not be treated as obscene.

I think it's a beautiful form,

and I didn't know it,

but once I saw it,
it started to feel familiar in this way.

And I started to see it around
in the natural world, in plants.

I also saw it in engravings,
on architectural sites.

I saw it in weavings
of oriental tapestries.

I started to see it around.

And that was very exciting.

And the form is interesting
not strictly as a sculpture,

but in patterns.

There's something very exciting

about looking into the power of the small,
the power of multiplicity.

Instead of creating just
this singular superior object,

what about putting
all these tiny beautiful forms

that together form a baby-clit army.

The one on the right,

(Laughter)

I call it 'Fleur-de-clits',

and the one on the left
was later used in the intervention

at the Whitney Museum.

So here's a sort of subversive
clit army coming together

to make the 'Fleur-de-clit',
which is this beautiful pattern.

But unfortunately,
if some people knew what it was,

it wouldn't be allowed to be.

And that's sort of the rub of it.

Here is an example of more
clit forms and patterns that I created.

This is a clit damask pattern

with clit forms burnished onto wood.

On the left is a new sculpture.

So, this is the first sketch
of an invisible clit sculpture.

It's the same digital form

that I used to make the gold sculpture
I just showed to you.

But this exists in the negative space.

So I used the laser
to actually cut out the form

from clear plexiglass.

And so this invisible sculpture
addresses the fact

that this is omnipresent,
and yet it's negated, it's invisible,

it's not allowed to be spoken of.

I also continued
with this idea of negation

and using the laser to burn away

with laser-cut works on paper.

And I developed a brand new technology.

You might not have heard about it,

but it's very cutting edge.

I'll try to explain.

It's called 'clitglass',
and the way that it works -

anyone can wear it;

anyone who wants neutral vision
can wear a clitglass.

So you put on the clitglass,

and you look through
the perspective of the clit.

And the clit refracts
any kind of phallocentricacy

that's coming back at you.

And so you obtain neutral vision,
or what I like to call 'normal' vision.

(Laughter)

Now, you can use clitglass
at the Whitney Museum,

or you can use it at work,
in front of the TV,

even at a family reunion.

(Laughter)

This is an example of looking through
this cutting edge technology.

So those forms that I showed earlier,

I also played a game at my intervention
at the Whitney Museum,

called 'put a clit on it', or -

'clit-dazzle the Whitney'.

So basically I handed out
these unknown clit forms, and I said:

'Put the clit wherever
you think it needs to go -

put it as a subject in art history,

put into the designs,
put it on the American flag.

Whole country has a problem
with illcliteracy.

Help America out.

Just take the clit where it needs to go.'

So you can see on the lower left,
that's a Clitchtenstein.

On the lower right, Clitsper Johns.

This is the family at the Whitney Museum
during the intervention,

and the boy on the left
who looks to be about 11 years old,

at one point asks his mom -

they'd been wearing the clitglasses
for about 15 minutes, having a great time.

He was like, 'Mom, what's a clit?'

(Laughter)

And she said: 'Oh, it's a really sensitive
part of the woman's body.'

And he was like, 'Okay, cool.'

And I was thrilled because

one: he felt comfortable
asking the question;

two: his mom was supportive
and answered the question.

And it was totally normal -
nothing obscene, nothing secret,

no one had to be dragged out of the room,
no one had to be ashamed.

And that's what I'm hoping
that cliteracy can continue to do.

Overwhelmingly, the response
to cliteracy has been positive.

So many people have supported the project
and wanted to help with it.

And there've been a few institutions
who have courageously started showing it.

But there's so much more
that needs to be done.

My dream is to radically change
the way that we think about bodies

so that everyone's body is respected.

I want to do this by creating
large scale permanent public sculptures

that exist for thousands of years.

I want to work with metals and stone

so that these forms don't disappear
in future generations,

and we don't have to have
this conversation again and again.

Democracy without cliteracy is a phallusy.

I want cliteracy to be taught in schools

so that no child has
an unnameable part of their body.

The clit should be a starring role
in any bedroom that it's in.

And it shouldn't be censored
in the Parliament.

So, in closing, I want to ask you

to see the clit.

See it everywhere.

Don't stop seeing it.

And if you need help,

you can borrow
this pair of glasses from me.

And don't just stop with seeing it.

Say it. Say its name.

(Applause) (Cheers)

Thank you.

(Applause)