My artistic practice investigates gendered experiences drawing on autobiography in much the same way that Second Wave Feminists used the personal to address patriarchal, political and social structures. In VOLCANICA, the body (my body) becomes a point of departure to explore sexuality and the seriousness of disease while utilizing playfulness and humor.

Volcanica invites the viewer to cross the threshold and enter the lush interior of the piece, experiencing an internal female space. Constructed from a patchwork of women’s clothes, items of the ordinary and everyday are transformed into a provocative environment. The chamber is an imprint of my personal history, a metaphor of living with endometriosis, a condition that is hidden beneath the outer layers. It goes unseen, undiagnosed and often untreated and it grows every month during the reproductive years of a woman’s life. This is a disease in which the endometrial tissue begins to grow outside the uterus; thus, blood is released during menstrual cycles in the places where the tissue has attached itself. The Endometriosis Association estimates that this chronic disease affects 5.5 million women and girls in the USA and Canada, and millions more worldwide. After I was diagnosed I underwent two common treatments, including the scraping of my interior body and the disruption my reproductive cycle. Rather than getting to the root of the problem, the treatments only addressed the symptoms. I feel that my body suffered as much from "medical care" as from my illness.

This problematic notion of treatment of the female body is also addressed in Volcanica. My tale is tied to other women’s histories and biology; thus each piece of fabric in the installation is bound together by a red hue and stitched to a neighbor. Yet every article of clothing retains its own identity and unique qualities from modest to eccentric, from fresh to worn, and from sensual to rough. As well as representing a variety of personality types and roles women in this culture have come to define for themselves the garments also depict an assortment of age, class background, ethnicity, body shape and size. 

In a time when more and more feminists believe in dealing with the social construct of gender and less with biology I reveal my medical history to illustrate how intricately interwoven culture and nature are. As Liz Grosz so eloquently urges, "…in short, the binary oppositions between the cultural and the natural—need careful reconsideration.

Volcanica makes use of my personal experiences as a foundation for questioning mind/body disharmony as well as to question how western medical practice deals with the female body. Biological systems gone awry are not only natural, but are, in part, human creations. Reproductive nightmares may erupt because of the underlying environmental, social and medical-industrial conditions of women’s lives. Feminism has brought us forward to a point of more freedom and choice while the female biology has another reality (a clock of its own) which science is constantly stretching and altering. This fascinating point of contention in the contemporary female experience is one I experience as a woman dealing with endometriosis.

Rachel J. Siegel
4/4/04