Diane Victor's scenes of fleshy excess and her theatrical renderings of sex and perversion are about more than simple moralizing - they are expressions of unbridled fascination and delight.
- Michael Smith
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| Diane Victor, Strip (detail), 1999, pastel and charcoal |
The perversity of South African sexuality is not limited to media-friendly lifestyle niches, although the polished and aestheticised depictions of kink that sex-up CSI and GQ are a far cry from the deviance that manifests itself in our society. Even a cursory knowledge of our nation's carnal exploits will render the realisation that we are deeply and multifariously messed up. A grocery list of exemplar sexual atrocities would usually appear about now, but I'll spare you this. Diane Victor, on the other hand, doesn't do sparing. In all senses of the word, her work has long been synonymous with excess. From the thickets of intensely laboured etching or charcoal line in sprawling compositions, to the viscerality of flesh ("human meat," as she calls it", to caricatures of theatrical sex play and perversion, Victor often seems akin to artists like Matthew Barney and Paul McCarthy in her commitment to surplus. In Strip, Victor explores the interstice between carnal and medical interests in bodies, to unnerving effect. This work was downloaded and printed by thousands of undergrad Feminist Art 101 devotees for its obvious nod to the problematising of flesh-as-sexual-spectacle. Sex play, as opposed to actual sex, seems to recur with regularity in Victor's images; think corsets, restraints, and men on all fours playing pony.
