Meet the Women Artists Taking an Unapologetic Approach to Sexuality

Female sexuality has a complicated artistic history. Women’s bodies have often been presented independently from their own wants and desires, filtered through the male gaze, objectified, and pornified within wider culture.

As part of a growing cultural understanding of women’s right to define their sexuality on their own terms, two group shows are rejecting this vision, exploring the many ways in which women artists express eroticism, sensuality, and connection, while confronting deeply rooted social stigmas.

When American curator and gallery founder Destinee Ross-Sutton started planning her group exhibition “Unapologetic WomXn” at Palazzo Bembo in Venice (on show through November 24th), she knew that she wanted to show how individual the experience of sexuality is from person to person. “An attack on women’s autonomy has been happening lately, questioning what it means to be a woman, whether that’s genetic, hormonal, or social,” she said in an interview with Artsy. “I wanted to focus on stories that aren’t being heard enough. It’s about including as many experiences as possible in order to show how multifaceted women are.”

The works, from 33 international artists, are hung in a salon style, with paintings and sculptures exploring everything from masturbation, to mutual pleasure, to abortion. New York–based conceptual artist Lydia Nobles, for example, presents Temperance (2021), a mixed-media chair sculpture covered in lashings of latex tubing: one of a series of works that responds to her friends’ own experiences of abortion. This personal approach highlights the individual and human feeling within a topic so politically heated.

Nude bodies lounge and tumble throughout the show. Saudi-born Pakistani American painter Nadia Waheed’s Love, After Rego (2022) shows two figures lying in wild grass with their heads turned intimately towards one another. In Ugandan artist Stacey Gillian Abe’s R Is for Rosie (2021), a t-shirted figure, nude from the waist down, meets the viewer’s gaze with a confident stare. British painter Gill Button’s works are tinged with watery blues, homing in on female faces lost in moments of sensual pleasure.

The works all encourage a direct relationship with the body, separate from the cultural projections forced onto it. “Lots of women have had an appreciation for themselves punished or shamed out of them,” Ross-Sutton said.

The curator herself takes part in this proud expression of female sexuality: She posed nude for British artist Vanessa Raw, whose Nothing to Lose (2023) is included in the show. Raw paints groups of women in intimate entanglements with one another, often surrounded by lush vegetation. In these works, physical contact is rendered sensual and joyful rather than pornographic, and her figures are often contained within safe, abundant green spaces. Posing was ultimately a therapeutic experience for Ross-Sutton, she explained. “I’m with my friends, we’re on the beach, and we’re just resting on each other,” she said. “It was quite a beautiful moment. Finally in my mind I had something to reinforce the idea that nudity isn’t just sexual. You’re doing this at least partly for yourself and there’s power in that.”

From Raw’s perspective, her painting practice offers her connection, bodily freedom, and psychological presence. She paints from both life and images found online, confronting viewers’ expectations around who female pleasure is for. “When you’re totally present, that’s when you’re really connected with everyone and everything around you, that’s what happiness is,” she said in an interview. “In nature, I feel totally connected with everything. When I’m painting models, I feel like I love every inch of them.”

There is also a strong emphasis in “Unapologetic WomXn” on tactile materials and those typically associated with femininity. Atlanta-born painter Ariel Dannielle’s if raindrops were gumdrops (2024), for instance, is embellished with glitter. The pointed key and its fluffy adornment in Swedish artist Isa Andersson’s sculpture Sweet Puff (2024) is reminiscent of a pubic area. These materials speak to gendered readings of materials, as well as touch and desire. Ross-Sutton said the keychain, for instance, highlights the “cutesy weapons” of women, in which something soft and fluffy might decorate a set of keys used for self-defense while walking home at night. “Being a woman isn’t all cute and soft,” she said. “We bleed once a month. Childbirth is gory and painful and messy. The violence we face simply because we’re women is disgusting. This combination of materials is a way of showing people that we aren’t cute and soft all the time.”

Meanwhile, in New York, the Museum of Sex has also invited three artists to delve into desire and the idea of “appetite.” “I Licked It, It’s Mine,” on view through January 19, 2025, presents a mischievous view of sexuality through the eyes of Oh de Laval, Shafei Xia, and Urara Tsuchiya. The exhibition is jubilant and carnal, featuring a cast of flushed human figures and wild animals. “My co-curator Amanda Assaf and I were drawn in by the exuberance of these three artists,” said the museum’s chief curator Ariel Plotek in an interview with Artsy. “I hesitate to use the word ‘joy,’ because there’s something a little darker in Oh de Laval’s sense of humor. But certainly, there’s something playful and irreverent in the work of all three artists, and a preoccupation with manifesting pleasure and desire.”

Polish Thai artist Oh de Laval explores 21st-century eroticism that takes in all aspects of sexuality, from lust, to despair, to happiness. Her bodies are rendered in thick, visceral strokes, surrounded by exaggerated Rococo-inspired interiors and abundant greenery. Japanese-born, Glasgow-based multimedia artist Tsuchiya, meanwhile, creates devilish ceramics, in which humans and creatures are caught in funny and erotic poses. In the show, she presents a ceramic bra with two fluffy pink rabbit faces over the breasts (Bunny Bra, 2023); a bowl filled with ceramic naked humans, a dog, a pig, and a teddy bear (Piggy’s Dream, 2022); and a figurine of a naked woman and a chimpanzee cuddling in bed (Max Mon Amour, 2020).

“For me, the works in this show function like fables, in which animals behave like humans, and vice versa,” said Plotek. “Humans are just animals that happen to have larger brains. If we look beyond our species, there are other ways that sexual desire and dominance can be expressed. We can all stand to be more present, and less prescriptive when it comes to our sexual selves.”

Animals—specifically rabbits, pigs, and tigers—also cavort in Chinese artist Shafei Xia’s paintings and sculptures. Her surreal works feature big cats rolling among heaps of breasts on the top of ceramic cakes or lounging on the sofa observing humans having sex. Her depictions of these creatures in the works touches on our kinship with animals and conveys aspects of natural behavior that often feels remote in the contemporary world.

“Animals are my friends,” the artist said in an interview, noting that the meaning of these motifs has shifted over time. “Year after year, from violence to gentleness, in the complex and ever-changing world of human nature, the animals I paint accompany me.”