Artist sculpts women to change narrative around female representation in art

Natasha Phoenix has been sculpting women in her caravan in East Lothian for the last few months as part of a two-year project to increase the number of female sculptures in Scotland.

Through the project, called “So She Appears”, Natasha hopes to empower women by creating sculpture through the “female gaze”, which she plans to exhibit next year.

Natasha said: “Women are so poorly represented in the arts generally and we’re really poorly represented in sculpture. 

“We’re mostly sculpted by men and so we call that the ‘male gaze’ and when women are sculpted through the male gaze we’re very much looking how we’re supposed to look for what’s beautiful at that time, we’re slimmed down, we’re beautified.

“Whereas women when we’re sculpted through the female gaze, which is what I’m trying to do, we look like the women that we are, we tell our real stories, not through a man’s eye and I really wanted to address the imbalance. 

“Scotland has not got a brilliant record so I hope I’m going to get a chance to do some sculpture, with women that will be in the public for children and other people to say ‘we exist, we are here.”

For every three paying customers, Natasha is sculpting two women completely for free. 

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Victoria Johnstone-Cooke is among some of the first women to be sculpted as part of the project after hearing about it online. 

She said: “I felt that she had taken my story and found really positive things that I hadn’t necessarily even thought about in myself and really celebrated those in what she produced. 

“I do feel just really celebrated as a person in a way that I would have never come up with myself, it’s quite amazing to have something created of you that will probably last way beyond your lifetime.”

Natasha is now hoping to put on an exhibition full of sculpted portraits of women and girls with the aim of making women feel more empowered and represented in art. 

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