Reclaiming the Female Body

Superheroines with muscle packs, uterine mucosa on the loose and Botticelli's Venus who has made a run for it - in "Endometriosis. Exhibition on the Disease" in the Central Laundry, Fine Arts meet Old Masters, pop culture and science mix. Above all, however, it is about education, as Marlène Pichler, one of the three exhibiting artists, emphasises: "Many people are not even aware of what is going on in the bodies of around half of humanity. On the contrary - people don't even talk about it because it could be dismissed as weakness."

Erdomeriosis, enomentriosis, endometriwhatever? Honestly, for a long time I too had trouble pronouncing the name of the disease correctly: Endometriosis. The somewhat tongue-twisting term refers to "the pathological proliferation of the endometrium outside the uterine cavity in the pelvic area, but also in various other places throughout the abdominal cavity". This is how the USZ describes the disease on its website. It's a disease that I didn't have the faintest idea existed until a few years ago - but it has always been there and menstruating people have had to deal with it since time immemorial. According to estimates, six to ten percent of menstruating women suffer from these painful growths. "Doctors know what it is. But all my other friends have hardly known about it, if at all," remarks Elsa Wuchner, who initiated the event as part of the feminist collective F96. She is a doctor herself and came to talk about the topic with her former lecturer and gynaecologist Dr Patrick Imesch. He specialises in the diagnosis and therapy of the disease and provides information in lectures. However, a lecture alone seemed too dry for Elsa. "There are many artists who have endometriosis or deal with the female body. I thought it could still be exciting to combine medicine and art." The idea for the hybrid of scientific input and art exhibition was born.

"To critique the current situation, I decided, Endometriosis as a man's disease."

-lynn Kohli

Before Patrick Imesch's lecture on 28 June, ethnologist Lynn Kohli will first present the final project of her studies, the short film "Endometriosis: chronically invisible", in which young men recite the experiences of endometriosis patients - as if they were their own stories. The reason for the upside-down world: endometriosis patients are still often not taken seriously by doctors and their environment, and symptoms are blamed on the psyche. "This often leads to a delay in diagnosis," Lynn Kohli notes. Research, too, is still in its infancy; according to Kohli, hardly any research funds are granted. "To criticise the current situation, I decided to stage this as a man's disease. Because if endometriosis really was that, the situation would definitely be different." Gender-based discrimination and misogyny are other terms that come up in the conversation about the project - and which Marlène Pichler and Amanda del Valle tie in with their work, albeit in a more subtle form. They, too, are concerned with the body, femininity and the question of what expectations, reactions, feelings go hand in hand with the representation and contemplation of what is considered feminine according to social conventions. Amanda del Valle's drawings evoke memories of the manga worlds of Sailor Moon and Mila Superstar - and at the same time irritate with the mountains of muscle with which the superheroines are packed. What does it do to the viewer when masculinity and femininity become blurred, when visual habits are turned upside down? Marlène Pichler also plays with expectations. In a walk-in room installation, she shows a digital reinterpretation of the painting "The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli. "The Venus in my pictorial space has long since moved on, however, because she no longer felt like standing in the shell all day as a projection screen." Instead, visitors are supposed to take the place of the foam-born and become part of the picture.

This is exactly what the five-day exhibition in the Central Laundry is supposed to be about: taking on other roles, changing perspectives, empathising with the unknown - and, above all, creating awareness for a disease that still receives too little attention.

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When: 28 June - 2 July 2023 (film & art exhibition)
Where: Zentralwäscherei Zurich
Lecture by Dr. med. Patrick Imesch: 28 June, 7 p.m. (admission from 6.30 p.m.), admission CHF 10

This text has been translated by DeepL.