Hannah Wilke The Willful Jouissance of Hannah Wilke

Hyperallergic Aug 14, 2021

ST. LOUIS — Pretty or gritty? Girly or galling? Delicate or in your face? Hannah Wilke straddled them all (often in stilettos), the femme priestess of 1970s body art whose irreverent take on objectification literally led her roving tongue to probe her inner cheek. Perhaps best known for her nude self-portraits and tiny vaginas twisted out of chewing gum, Wilke embraced a creative practice in which exhibitionism and interiority consciously crossed their ludic limbs; she was a sculptor turned sculpture, a pulchritudinous provocateur, a looker with the audacity to deliberately look.