Vulva writes with blood, and the letter with blood comes in: an approach from the aesthetics of abjection to Nadia Granados’ and Colectivo Zunga’s artwork

Abstract

The article approaches the artworks Anti-phallic (2000) and Disgust and Blood (2010) by Nadia Granados, and the artworks We the Blue-blooded Women (2012) and From Bud to Blossom (2013) by Zunga Collective, from the abjection concept proposed by Julia Kristeva and, specially, from the blood as a way of Vulva’s abject writing. In Granados’ case, the opposition between the disgust generated by menstrual blood and the “naturalization” of the endless river of blood produced by violence in Colombia is shown. In the case of Zunga Collective, the sanitization of menstrual blood is questioned from the advertising discourses and the double social and media message (abjection/romanticization) about menstruation as a rite of passage. In both cases, the artworks worked on have not received enough critical attention. The readings of Granados’ artwork privilege his piece Colombianization, audiovisual imaginaries, and resistance in terms of gender and sexualities; the scarce readings of the Zunga Collective are closer to the group’s position as artists than to interpretations of their work. The closest work to this article is that of Claudia Mandel, who mentions the abject in contemporary visual artworks, but she does not address any national names. Therefore, this article contributes to the field of Colombian artistic criticism in the 21st century, both from the artists’ artworks and from the proposed approach.