The Diversity of Yoni Art: Myriam Thyes

In the next few articles, I would like to highlight the work of artists making yoni or vulva art whose oeuvre astounds and inspires me. When juxtaposed, I think they excellently highlight the diversity of this art genre in the world and offer a range of ways in which the yoni, its politics and its magic can be interpreted, analyzed, and celebrated.

Myriam Thyes

Photo: @ Karsten Mühlhaus, muehlhausetc, Troisdorf, 2012

Myriam Thyes is a Germany-based artist who challenges dominant and entrenched representations of social phenomena by contradicting them, re-interpreting them, and drawing out what they hide. She uses video, animation, collage, abstraction, and found footage to transform, spark dialogue, and build new conceptual understandings of well-known figures, powerful symbols, myths, and signs from architecture, society, politics, and religion. Her artwork is driven by a desire to explore, question, re-evaluate, and create dialogue. Her work is conceptual and visually sensual.

Thyes’ “Global Vulva” exhibit is a series of plates of the vulva represented in history, but re-imagined. Similar to this exhibit, you might recall my November 2023 art newsletter where I presented the Brain Mandorla painting which was inspired by apotropaic or protective vulva iconography from the medieval period such as vulva and phallus badges worn by medieval pilgrims to ward off evil energies. Thyes captures the diverse cultural significance of the vulva through re-imagined paleolithic engravings, representations of the Greek goddess Baubo, the Siberian winged woman from an ice-age culture, the Sheila-na-gigs from Ireland, the Indian goddess Kali, the Yoni stone, the Tibetan goddess Naljoma Dewa, a noble ancestor of the Iwena in Angola, the Aztec goddess Mayahuel, the Black Stone in the Kaaba in Mecca, a double-tailed mermaid from a Tuscan church, the protecting Dilukai from Micronesia, the yoni or vulva mudra, “Lotus and Bee” in a labyrinth, an amulet from the Egyptian goddess Hathor, a winged sun disk, and the oldest human figure called the Venus of Hohle Fels.

I’m going to focus on two of the images from this exhibit, Winged Woman and Demitorso with Twin Eggs.

Winged Woman

GLOBAL VULVA, 2009, Winged Woman 

The Winged Woman captures the ways in which Russian cultures revered images of heaven-sent winged women or “birds of joy”, called Sirin because of their perceived protective powers. Russian women often wore jewelry or carried household items like baskets depicting the Sirin to gain protection and increase their fertility (Keating, 2016). With Winged Woman by Thyes, we find the Sirin-like figure, but without a crown, opening her vulva represented as a target. Thyes boldly invokes two meanings of target, one which would have resonated with medieval and early modern-era Russia that treated the Sirin with reverence for her powers of fertility, a target to expand life and bring joy to all, and the other that captures the modern-era’s (or post-post-modern era’s, whatever the case may be) irreverence for the vulva where women’s vaginas are the targets for men’s sexual pleasure, an object to conquer, entry, a goal to achieve, and once hit, a celebration that defines their mythology among their tribe. This interpretation reminds me of a story a man once told me about when he went to a strip club and threw coins at a stripper’s vagina when she opened her legs as if it was a target. He was trying to see if he could get the coins in the hole.

Alternatively, the Winged Woman looks happy. She may be inviting entry to her cosmic destination. She may be expressing her sexual freedom, saying here I am, I am a target that stands out, I am open for the brave and interesting, I am the entry point to ego erasure.

The snakes of this image represent re-birth and transformation; in the Abrahamic traditions, snakes represent sexual desire and the fall from God’s grace. Is Thyes showing the re-birth of the woman or the re-birth of the iconography? Is the women with a target for her vulva being transformed for good or falling victim to her sexual desire and losing standing because of it? One need only invoke the speed of gossip over perceived personal life choices to justify this interpretative question. This image is truly a remarkable and thought-provoking piece of cultural analysis. Much, much more could be said.

Demitorso with Twin Eggs

GLOBAL VULVA, 2009, Demitorso 

The original Demitorso invoked in Thyes’ Demitorso with Twin Eggs refers to carvings of a deity with two eggs in her womb in what is now Moldova in the 5th Millennium BCE. The carvings were nude or given a design across their surface to indicate fur clothing. During the Neolithic period, groups moved from the caves of Near East to the Old Europe, mainly Italy, Greece, and Crete because of their fertile lands. This era marked a distinct break in the histories of the Near East and Europe. Features of Paleolithic mythology such as goddess worship were continued through Neolithic times among early hunter-gatherers and after human abandonment of caves, into the era of agriculture. Since the average human life at this time was 33 years, death was imminent. The focus of the culture was on fertility and rebirth. In the settled environments of the Neolithic era, women began cultivating crops. Early agriculture dates back to 18,000 BCE, while planting only became widespread in 7,000 BCE. This planting period was marked by a low instance of violence, weapons do not appear among grave goods, and the goddess religion persisted into the New Stone Age with the Creatrix, represented by the egg-carrying posture figures. Many of the figures at this time include double eggs placed inside of complete statues.

Johnson (1994) writes that

“The location of the eggs and the surface decorations identify the origin of the universal life force. The symbolic patterns incised on these idols may have acted as a visual means of invoking the Goddess”.

Here, however, Thyes takes the raw materials of the original Demitorso carvings and re-invents them for a modern-day audience. The new image questions just how much fertility reverence for the demitorso has disappeared. The focal point of the image is the cup or funnel, not the two eggs, though the eggs remain. The demitorso is a receptacle to receive contents, the bent buttocks imply control (body pushed down) or consent (body bent over). The cup monopolizes the view. The cup’s mouth is wide open; it is so wide across the image as to be inviting (but is the opening indeed an unequivocal invitation?), and capable of carrying considerable fluid to be drained into its fields, sacred or not. From this image, I am moved. Women’s bodies are the things into which fluids are poured and fluids are drunk, the openness of the glass indicates its expected availability, but also its choice to be open (does it have a choice?). This image strikes into my heart questions about women’s bodily autonomy, forced access, willing openness, where fluids go, the purpose or multi-purpose of the funnel, direction of flow, and how women are loved. Is the heart in the cup peaking out or hiding? Does it want to be seen? Is it questioning whether it will be received and cherished even if it blocks the hole? 

In a word, this image blows my mind. Is the central message about fertility, bodily self-discipline or comportment, bodily autonomy, bodily control, or about none of these things? In the modern era, such real-life images of this abstract derrière are the obsession of the pornography industry. Men can penetrate deeper from this angle. Women report that it is harder to orgasm in this position. The glorification of the womb in a culture of short-lifespans from the Neolithic era has morphed into a culture of instant gratification and insatiability for the openness of women in a global society still dominated by men that seek to disavow the grip of death on humanity, including their own.

The video animation Global Vulva is currently being exhibited and will be screened at the Rudolph Scharpf Gallery by Wilhelm-Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany: 

To see the entire exhibit

To see Myriam’s larger body of work

Works Cited:

 Johnson, Buffie (1994). Lady of the beasts: The Goddess and her sacred animals. Inner Traditions/Bear & Co.

Keating, K. D. (2016). Romantic Nationalism and the Image of the Bird-Human in Russian Art of the 19th and early 20th Century.