Rhine Bernardino
Twelve artists recently launched The Calendar, an art project that explores the intersection of body, performance art practice and identity. Using fruits to explore the female body, artists created a performative photographic work focusing on a particular fruit for each month of 2024. The images are released as limited edition prints that can be bought individually (per month), collectively as a set, or as postcards through the project website: https://the-calendar.net/
The Calendar seeks to play around and experiment on the sexualised interpretation of “calendar girls” and how this propagates problematic representation, sexualisation and standardisation of what the female form should look like.
The relationship between fruits and the sexualisation of the female body is a complex and culturally influenced topic. In various cultures and art forms, fruits have been used as symbols of fertility, sensuality and abundance. Incorporating fruits in the project serves as a deliberate choice to re-examine the associations between fruit symbolism and the female body.
The performative photographic images not only highlight the artistic practice of the artists but also serve as an invitation for dismantling harmful stereotypes about femininity whilst opening up discussions of a more nuanced understanding of it.
Poet Angela Gabrielle Fabunan wrote this poem for the project:
Women Breathing Fire
We are the good girls
your mother warned you about.
Incendiary, we were fire.
Twelve girls for every month
of the year, we are good girls now
coming out. January’s a firecracker,
February can sink love, March is insane,
and April and May bring no shower
to the table. June and July are blazing a trail,
while August and September are not
allowed in school. October’s a breeze,
but November and December are festival creatures.
Here’s the whole circus: we are the good girls,
the one your father shunned, the one
your brother took for granted, here on the wall
of your calendar, the one you burned once too many,
about to give you the show of your life.
Angela Gabrielle Fabunan
Participating Artists: Priscila Piantanida, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, JOYEN, Raz Salvarita, Mirjam Dalire, Manmeet Devgun, Niya B., Ayca Ceylan, Victoria Gigante, Ea Torrado, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen
Designer: Yodel Pe; Website: Celeste Montales
