The Vagina Painting that was performed at the Fluxus Festival in New York, cannot be clearly associated to feminist art, because Shigeko Kubota did not adopt a clear position. The Fluxus movement stands for performance art, turning against elite art[1] and aiming to the unity of life and art.

The audience is present while the artist is creating his/her artwork, an interaction happens between the artist and the audience. Kubota fixed a brush on her underwear, dipped the brush into red color and assuming a crouching position she painted red lines on a white sheet of paper on the floor, reminding of menstruation blood. The woman’s body is no longer passive, but active and creative, and leaves behind his passive shadowy existence of a model for the mostly male painter and surface for sexual projection. Turning against conventional art movements Kubota applies new ways of expression confronting the public therewith. Here the concept of art undergoes a substantial change, since the painting lies in front of the artist on the floor, a way of painting adopted by Jackon Pollock, too. In the literature Kubota’s work is described as rejoinder to Pollock’s Drip Paintings, which because of their dripping, splashing form remind of ejaculate. In contrast, in Kubota’s Vagina Painting the emphasize is put on the female process of gestural painting. Painting with her vagina she thematizes the naming of the female genital, designated “lack of phallus” by Freud. Due to this lack is blocked “the access to a valid linguistic, pictural or gestural expression.

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As found on Vagina Museum’s website.