Modified Storage Space

I finished this painting maybe a month ago, it was part of some research work I was doing for what I thought would be my thesis.
Sometime last year I "awoke" from a lifetime of being a brainwashed woman. Before I got to New York, I was in a relationship of sorts with a guy that liked slapping and hair pulling in bed, which is fine, but I'm not into that shit and he kept doing it, even though I asked him not to and, for whatever reason that I just haven't figured out, I didn't defend myself when he would do it again and didn't say anything again.
He wouldn't do it every time we had sex, but I didn't know wether he'd do it or not.
I think part of not defending myself might have been fear of what would happen if I did defend myself, after all, it is said over and over again, that no matter what, men are always stronger than women. So is there even really a point to even try to defend myself?
So, I'm just blaming it on brainwashing.
There are many other things that I didn't like about having sex with this guy, he hardly ever kissed me and, when he did kiss me, I wasn't a fan of the way he kissed me either; there was hardly ever foreplay, so when he got his boner, he'd just put some spit on my cunt and penetrate me. And it was painful.
I have what I think is pretty good pain tolerance, I obviously have no gauge with which to measure, nobody does, but I like to think that I tolerate pain well enough. Pain usually makes me really angry, but whenever there was pain during sex, I felt like I was obligated to just take it. So I did the great majority of the time, with this dude and whatever other dude.
I had this image of myself that I thought I was supposed to be as a female, an idea that I thought I liked, a "temptress", "seductress", "always willing", impassive and insatiable witch.
And upon reading a book called "El Cuerpo en Venta" by Juan Carlos Pérez Gauli, all my shit was put in the fucking blender.
The book talks about the relationship between art and advertising and how the female body has been used in both throughout history. It also talks about how women and nature are put in relationship to each other, because they are both things that are mysterious to men and have so to be dominated by man. Or some shit like that, the book depressed the living fuck out me.
I don't remember everything, but it obligated me to reconsider a lot of things about myself that I thought to be true. So this dude that liked slapping and hair pulling and the things in the book, just put this idea in me and that shit snowballed and I wanted to make images that dealt with how I've been treated and how I'm still treated by men and others. I don't know who "others" are, but it's definitely not just the men. And it's also not all men. The whole sexism issue is something that affects everyone, but the research work was meant to help me convey how it feels for me. I can't speak for anyone else, now can I?
So, anyway.
I mean, I was aware of feminism and sexism, but I just didn't know how deep it went. To look at another human and see an object is all kinds of fucked up, it's absurd, but that's exactly what happens.
I read somewhere a comment full of hate about how women are seen as nothing but a hole in which men put their dicks. And I saw an illustration once, of a woman with a bull's head and she had the dotted lines of cuts of cow meat.
Why do we have to treat each other this way?
So, I made a painting of a vulva, titled "Storage Space" and this painting that you see here, titled "Modified Storage Space".
As usual, the work becomes more, sort of, as I work on it. And this painting started out with only the two cuts on the side of her mouth, as if somebody wanted to make her mouth open farther. I'm not sure if that would work, but clearly whoever is torturing her doesn't care.
Afterwards, it became that she had more scars on top of the scars of the cuts on the side of her mouth, her skin is also surprisingly good at healing, so her abuser kept hurting her.
Also, when I first started it, her lips were pretty relaxed, it could have been any mouth, party open, the person is distracted or something. But as I painted her more, she started looking like she's just about to grimace in pain or like she's just about to start crying again.
After a while of telling other people what I was working on, it kept feeling more and more like I was victimizing myself and trying to get pity from somebody, so I laid off all that shit and the work changed. So, I'll post about that some other time, but this is a little painting that I really like and I enjoyed painting it. I find it an incredibly beautiful image and I love the Dioxazine Purple with which I painted her and how the purple coming from the sides of her neck look like they're going to engulf her and the entire image and maybe that's why she's so afraid.

Plague (Reprise)

This entry might come off as disgusting. Don't curr.

I'm writing this entry as a reprise, like they do in songs, because I was hesitant about writing this in the first entry. This is what I wanted to accompany "Plague" with, in my mind, these thoughts are what accompany "Plague".
They're thoughts that came during the making of the piece. Originally, I think I wanted to do the image, because I liked how my jawbone looked on the sides of my face in that specific position and top lit, maybe I'll remember what it was that I wanted to do from the beginning eventually.

So, I'm going to write out what I wrote in my journal and I'll add other things that I also didn't add into the journal entry as notes, either, 'cuz I thought those things would come off as even more disgusting.

Sometimes, I have the desire to burst and explode
Sometimes, feelings seem to be a substance or a being in their own right, they are trying to break free from my rib cage
I'm a big fan of singing and I have serious admiration for singers that I perceive sing sincerely
I find that singing perhaps is the most honest form of output, it seems somehow as the most direct and the most untarnished
You inhale air, it occupies your chest and you push it out through your vocal chords and nose and if you do it appropriately, it's your feelings that come out
So, as far as one putting out one's insides in the truest way, singing is a beautiful way of doing it
I don't know exactly how it is linked with vomiting, because it certainly isn't the same
I haven't vomited many times in my life
Some of the last times that it happened, it was on somebody's bathroom floor, I might have urinated myself simultaneously.
One other time, I was at the tail end of my period, but the contraction of my abdomen pushed a couple of droplets of blood out and onto the floor and my host cleaned it. Both times, I rinsed myself and we continued to have a good time. It actually might have happened the same night, where I started out with my head in the toilet and moved to the shower, because I was peeing myself. I don't really remember.
This happened as a consequence of roofies (GHB) and alcohol.
I remember being amused at the position I found myself in, when I pissed myself.
I was on all fours, on the shower floor, I thought of how rockstars probably go through similar things and possibly even more disgusting, involving shit sometimes (I heard a recording once, of Trent talking about having to take a shit and not having a bathroom and how him and his musicians had to shit into bags and whatever, I didn't have the patience to hear the whole thing) and other bodily fluids.
So, I was in this situation, where I had no control over what my body was doing, except smiling to myself, because I felt so rock and roll. And because it felt so decadent and destructive and nihilistic. At the time, I was also in the middle of a relationship with a guy in which I had a lot of fun and also a lot of very unsavory moments and situations.
Puking and pissing myself at the same time on all fours on his shower floor was not one of the unsavory moments. I haven't figured out yet what it is that I find so appealing about self destruction and just going out and getting really fucked up and shit faced, I just get in that mood sometimes. Most of the time, I'm 180 degrees from that and I take pretty good care of myself.
But, anyway, my abdomen spasmed, pushing whatever it was out.
Vomiting requires a lot of effort, effort over which you have no say, your body takes control of itself without you having a grasp of anything and, in that sense, it's pretty cool. Your body makes this effort for you, it doesn't matter at all if you have the physical or mental energy to do it.
I guess I see some kind of relationship to singing, because it's a situation in which something is coming directly out of the body. In that way, they are both visceral and raw and it doesn't get more honest than that. So for "Plague", I guess, there is something of that happening.
I don't know what "that" is. Do I think there is some sort of evil in me and I'm releasing it to the world? No. Is there something inside me I want to get rid of? Sometimes.
I certainly don't picture the overwhelming feelings that I have in my chest sometimes that way. I picture that specifically as an explosion, not something that makes its way out through my orifices.
"Plague" is kind of a disgusting painting, the texture that the mussels makes is nasty and for a fleeting moment when I've looked at it before, whilst working on it, they looked like the carapaces of roaches. And a lot of people that have looked at the image, think the same thing.
The piece has gotten reactions of "oh, this is intense" or "oh, this is disgusting", I love all the reactions. I love the entire image. As I was musing in the previous entry, I hear some kind of rumbling sound when I look at her, I also hear the retching, she frowns involuntarily at the effort of vomiting the plague out. She is in the middle of a maelstrom, formed by a viscous substance and the plague that is coming out of her.
Sometimes, I feel (or maybe more correct is "I remember") the mussels coming out of my own mouth. I remember vomiting and my abdomen contracted so tight from puking, I remember how tiring it is. I remember the bitter and horrible taste of stomach acid, mixed with morsels of half digested food, out of my mouth, burning my throat and larynx like it was sand paper on the tissue of my insides. It's kind of like a tsunami from within.

Plague

Today, I finished this self portrait titled "Plague".
As usual, I don't really know where the image came from, but at the same time, they kind of "form" themselves as I make them, which is cool. I think sometimes that the work I make is kind of isolated panels from comics and I imagine the story as I advance in the piece, which is cool.
Sometimes they acquire a very deep meaning to me and they become really personal or they're personal from the beginning.
So anyway.
Towards the end of this painting, I really liked how she kind of became this creature that seems to be making an incredible effort to get rid of whatever she is vomiting. People that have seen it are reminded of Neptune or some kind of sea creature, I imagine it's because of the blue.
To me, she's not necessarily good or evil, she is doing a lot of effort to vomit this substance out of her body. The painting moves a little bit, it sounds like a rumble, it looks kind of like a tornado. She makes the retching sound, I can kind of feel the mussles coming out of my own throat. I feel what I feel the few times that I've puked in my life: my torso curving against my will, my abdomen contracting, my throat hurts.

The piece is done over wood panel, I drew first, then glued a bunch of mussles, then put on some blue acrylic paint, then some clear gesso, then painted with prussian blue and payne's grey.