Ula Zuhra
(Illustrator, etc)
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This Little Death (2023)
Gouache, ink and watercolors on paper
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, la petite mort or “The Little Death” has, over the last 500 years, meant “fainting fit,” “nervous spasm,” and orgasm. The combination of the feminine of petit, or little, with mort, or death, translates to mean a brief foray into a death-like state – specifically the brief loss or weakening of consciousness. Today, it specifically means the sensation of orgasm as likened to death.
This artwork delves deep into the sensation of a self-inflicted orgasm and how it is the true form of self-love. The idea of a female orgasm inflicted from masturbation is still taboo in some cases in Indonesia and some places in the world. Seeing that male masturbation is almost a right of passage in a teenage boy’s life and an abomination in a girl’s life experience. The notion that girls are supposed to be naive, fragile little creatures condemn the fact that sexual discovery is a pivotal part in her coming-of-age experience.
The use of the feminine over the masculine iteration of the phrase in French is interesting in and of itself matter-of-fact because what is most mythologized IS the female orgasm. What is seen as beautiful and glamorized and has launched a thousand sonnets in poetry is the female orgasm. But why is it always connected to sexual penetration or owed to a man on the other side of the bed?
Submitted for “Figures by Figure” Exhibition at A3000 and curated by Figures.
24 June 2023.
