Phallic Art is Everywhere; So Where Are All the Yonis?

From city skylines to public art, our visual world is built on phallic art. We explore the cultural silence surrounding yonic art and how reclaiming this ancient symbol helps us see the world, and our bodies, in balance.

There’s an old Internet saying that goes: "Once you see it, you can’t unsee it." 

This phrase usually captions an image with a subtle detail that puts it in an entirely different, and often ridiculous, light. It also perfectly describes any sort of realization that permanently changes your perception of the world.

One obvious example is the fact that a very specific silhouette defines our world. Phallic imagery is everywhere in both metaphorical and literal senses, from skyscrapers and water towers to monuments, trophies, and way markers. Even here in the learned hub of academia, KW, our landmarks lean into the same typology. Consider the big old Clock Tower in Victoria Park: a tall, vertical shaft of stone capped with a dome, ostensibly named for a woman.  

We start noticing that things look like an erect penis long before we are old enough to engage in art criticism, primarily because it is funny, but more importantly, because it is true. Later, formal art history teaches us what we’ve long known colloquially: the phallus is a potent symbol of power, conquest, and a seemingly unending need to make things bigger. From ancient obelisks to modern skyscrapers, the phallus is everywhere. It demands to be seen and is impossible to ignore.

That is not a real "once you see it" moment, though. It is too obvious. Almost every person you meet knows what a phallic image is and can describe it. It is a given. 

What I truly cannot unsee is how few people can name the phallus’ counterpart. Ask ten ordinary people what the opposite of phallic art is, and most of them will have no idea what it is called.

I must now admit to something I find embarrassing in retrospect. For about 30 years, I did not know the word for the counterpart to "phallic," nor had I even wondered whether one existed. That word, of course, is yonic art, from the Sanskrit yoni.

To give myself some credit, my late realization makes sense. Society so often treats men as the default and women as the exception, and this applies to bodies, too. The phallus is conventional, while the yoni remains, unfortunately, obscure. Once you see this imbalance, you can’t unsee it.

So, how did we get here?

Why Phallic Art is Everywhere

Long before we are old enough to see a tall structure as a phallus, society teaches us to associate it with authority.

When you look at a city skyline, you aren't just seeing offices and condos.These skylines project political and economic ego. These things didn't just sprout up overnight. People with power deliberately placed them there.

Even when the argument for these designs is purely practical, architects and planners build these structures with a degree of ego. A big building doesn’t necessarily have to stand out, as it could blend in with its neighbours like the sprawling mid-century apartment blocks of Central and Eastern Europe. Architects intentionally design them to stand out.

By the time we realize what these shapes resemble, we already know what they symbolize: power, and the means to enact it. Upright equals important.

Historically, this symbol of power was not only literal but also spiritual. As noted by Christian-Georges Schwentzel, citing Giulia Sissa and Marcel Detienne's La Vie quotidienne des dieux grecs, people in ancient Greek and Roman cultures believed the phallus, known as phallos or fascinus, possessed magical powers. Citizens used this symbol of strength and prosperity to protect a city from harm. 

As Western society developed, this protective symbol was co-opted by political and economic regimes. The obelisks of Ancient Rome became the skyscrapers of London, New York and, yes, Toronto. When you look at a city skyline today, you are seeing what geographer Jane Darke described as patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass, and concrete. 

And it’s not only skyscrapers and things that resemble the penis that surround us. Public parks and museums have accepted realistic depictions in the form of paintings, statues, and sculptures as “serious” art for centuries. Seldom does phallic art generate much controversy, and when it does, the phallus usually wins. For example, as Nadia Khomami reported in The Guardian, when Imperial College students protested a planned Anthony Gormley sculpture they alleged was phallic, the university installed it anyway.

We easily recognize phallic art and symbolism because of a long, deliberate history. Yonic art, on the other hand? Sadly, it remains surrounded by a culture of silence and shame. Seldom will you find the vulva on display in a gallery, alongside David and Adam. Even where the mainstream art world accepts yonic work, male-centric environments often produce it. Online, social media algorithms frequently flag even plainly educational drawings of the vulva as pornographic, an issue Aviva Romm, MD, highlights in her work on how censorship impacts women’s sexual health.

As for architecture, critics routinely ridicule the very notion of a "feminine structure". Yonic architecture does exist, but examples are few and far between relative to its counterpart. This was evident in the sexual bias against Zaha Hadid’s Qatar Stadium, which, as critic Aaron Betsky noted, was widely mocked for its yonic resemblance.

The Case of the Missing Yoni

There was a time, long before Western religion dictated the female anatomy as a source of shame, when the yoni had a much better reputation. 

In prehistoric times, as Star Goode notes in The Icon of the Vulva: A Basis of Civilization, early cultures celebrated women’s genitalia as symbols of fertility. Early humans didn't yet understand the male role in procreation, so the yoni was the only recognized source of life. Long before the first obelisk was carved, people were painting and carving yonic forms on cave walls across the globe.

In Sanskrit, the yoni is a powerful symbol representing the divine feminine and the goddess Shakti, the source of all creation, life, and the universe. As Viv Groskop writes for The Independent, goddesses in these cultures would lift their skirts and "flash" their privates to increase crop yields and ward off evil. 

Western religion later shifted this perspective to shame, framing the vulva as a source of sin rather than of power and life. In the Greek and Roman worlds, while artisans carved the phallus into every street corner, the vulva began to disappear. Even when rendering nude goddesses like Aphrodite, artists gave them perfectly smooth pubic areas, omitting the clitoris and labia entirely.

These omissions are not accidents or simple oversights, but rather deliberate cultural erasure. By the time the 20th century rolled around, the dominant culture had practically removed the vulva from the public profile.

Even the words we use contribute to the silence. We often say "vagina" (Latin for "sheath") when we mean the external vulva, framing the body as an accessory to the penis. This non-naming of the female anatomy is part of the shame. 

Plot Twist: She’s Been Here All Along

Here’s the good news. Despite two thousand-some-odd years of trying to defang the feminine of its power, no one can ever actually erase the yoni. You can’t hide something that’s baked into nature and life itself.

Patriarchy can build towers to draw your eye upward, but yoni and yonic symbols are far older and more pervasive than monuments built to overshadow.

For one, they exist in the curves of the very landscapes on which those monuments stand: deep caves, sheltered valleys, mountain springs, and underground tunnels. It’s in lotus flowers, pomegranates, figs, and roses. Nature loves to make yonis.

We see this in nature’s designs and its laws. The vesca piscis, a mathematical shape “formed by the intersection of two disks with the same radius,” resembles both a vulva and the moment of cell division. At its centre is the mandorla, a yoni that, as Emma Cieslik observes, has been hiding in the windows and walls of cathedrals for centuries.

Speaking of churches, the defiant Sheela Na Gigs, medieval stone carvings of naked women exposing their vulvas, managed to stay perched on the walls of churches across Britain and Ireland for hundreds of years. While Victorian leaders tried to tear them down as obscene, dozens still remain. Today, feminist artists are actively reviving her.

If you look hard enough, you might even find a yoni or two in our own public squares. Critics call the (in)famous Aporia sculpture over on Frederick Street puzzling and abstract, but from the right angle, it sure does look like a vulva to me. 

 Yonis are everywhere for those willing to see them. Once you do start to see them, you can’t unsee them.

Yonic Art Isn’t Going Anywhere

There is a movement, persisting in spite of censorship and shame, to change the way we talk about the vulva. This is why a space like the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery exists. It provides a physical space to have these conversations.

Becoming aware broadens our perspective. If you wish to experience a space dedicated to this balance, visit us at the Yoni Mudra Art Gallery on Duke Street West in Kitchener. We invite you to spend time with the art, have tea in the cafe, or participate in one of the many classes or community events here.

And, finally, as you go about your day-to-day, keep your eyes open. Once you recognize the circles, caverns, and curves that make up the world around us, you may find it easier to look beyond all those monuments to "him" and see the potential for more space for us.