Ryoko Suzuki

The title Sexual Deployment is taken from Michel Foucault’s seminal work The History of Sexuality, where he analyzes the politics of power surrounding our approach to sexuality. In it, Foucault defines what he calls ‘the deployment of alliance’ and ‘the deployment of sexuality,’ two opposing systems that address sexuality in completely different ways and where power is a game that centers on the body.

To deploy sexuality is to own the body, to use it to break free from what binds us. Today we present work by Japanese artist Ryoko Suzuki, who in her photographic series Bind ties her body with pigskin which has been soaked in her own blood. Her face, arms and legs are seemingly disfigured by these ties evoking notions of violence and repression. In other works such asMasturbation, Suzuki also utilizes her body as a tool by making masks of silicone of her own face. According to the artist, “silicone acts as a second skin. The texture of my skin was imprinted on the surface of the semi-transparent silicone, looking like the remains of layer upon layer of sloughed- off skin.”

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