Sonja Yakovleva
Soaplands
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|---|---|
| Author(s) | Anna Gien, Sabrina Günther, Oliver Koerner von Gustorf, Egor Sofronov |
| Design | Correspondence (Justus Gelberg, Berlin & Lukas Engelhardt, Amsterdam) |
| Size | 25 x 32 cm |
| Cover | Hardcover |
| Pages | 256 |
| Illustrations | 164 |
| Language(s) | German, English |
| ISBN | 978-3-96912-145-0 |
Sonja Yakovleva’s (b. Potsdam, 1989; lives and works in Frankfurt am Main) silhouettes are informed by her sex-positive feminist views. They mix and match pornography with art-historical references, folkloristic motifs, fairy tales, and myths that have served to ingrain misogynistic, racist, and homophobic ideologies in the collective consciousness since the Middle Ages. The dissemination of such materials was facilitated by the paper cut, a medium that encouraged simplified graphical representations and was seen as domestic and appropriate for women. Yakovleva’s intentions in adopting it, however, are contrarian: her iridescent silhouettes grapple with women’s stories, precarious gray areas, power relations, representation, sexuality, and violence in novel ways.
Soaplands, the title of Sonja Yakovleva’s first monograph, is a nod to Japanese bathhouses where men receive personal care, massages, and sexual services. Most recently, a number of soaplands have opened that cater to women with male prostitutes. Similarly, in the paper cuts in the book, which were created between 2018 and 2023, women have seized sexual power and conquered the patriarchal system. Unchecked by shame, they use men as objects to satisfy their desires.
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10€ Add to cartSonja Yakovleva (b. Potsdam, 1989; lives and works in Frankfurt am Main) uses pornographic representations and images from the internet as templates for papercuts, some in large formats, that grapple with personal and public stories about women, power relations, sexuality, and violence. The silhouettes show popular motifs that have served to ingrain fairy tales, myths, and ideologies in the collective consciousness from the colonial era to modernism and the early twenty-first century. Yakovleva, whose art is often associated with sex-positive feminism, appropriates this folkloristic visual idiom and hybridizes and sexualizes it. Dessous and strap-on dildos, for example, figure as preserved specimens of butterflies and insects, bringing historic scientific expeditions to mind. Yet her work also addresses the capitalist urge to categorize, evaluate, and market every kink.
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Freedom is the key idea in the two artists’ oeuvre: the freedom to be authentic and express oneself without shame. Their subtly provocative play with aesthetic conventions and taboos has not only made a splash on the arts scene, it has also prompted vital discussions about gender roles, body images, and the right to sexual self-determination.
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