The Cups Journey
2023
wax, light
This work reflects on heavily industrialised menstrual products, investigating the relation between women and their bodies in different cultural contexts. It is based on the real-life experience of attempting to purchase a menstrual cup as an Asian woman in a German drugstore. Besides the fact that there are no "smaller" size cups for people with a relatively petite figure, a series of questions was raised. Where does the idea of placing an object into women's bodies come from? How come I have the urge to buy such a product, even though I have never used it and am physically repulsed by it?
The installation The Cups Journey is an amalgamation in response to those concerns, consisting of a pile of hand-made, extra-small-sized cups lying in the corner of the room. They are frangible, translucent, and marginal, already in the setting for disposal, speaking to the absent touch and warmth in the product of globalisation.