Our Bodies Ourselves

Monica Sjöö was controversial throughout her life. In raw and bold imagery, she was an early advocate of women’s right to sexual empowerment and free abortion. Sjöö was also, from early on, a dedicated environmental activist, as well as an outspoken advocate for gender equality and gay rights. She became politically aware in her youth, through demonstrations against the Vietnam war, the anarchist movement and the independent art scene in Stockholm. These experiences laid the foundation for Sjöö’s vivid existence as an artist and activist in the United Kingdom, where she spent most of her adult life, and where she became a key figure in the British women’s liberation movement.

For a long time, unfairly, neglected by the art establishment, time has now, finally, caught up with this extremely far-sighted, visionary and versatile artist/activist. Our Bodies Ourselves was one of the absolute highlights in the recent retrospective MONICA SJÖÖ -The Great Cosmic Mother (Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom; Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden) in 2023 and 2024. In the exhibition catalogue Gitte Ørskou (Director, Moderna Museet) and Paul Hobson (Director, Modern Art Oxford) writes:

In recent decades, broad socio-political shifts have contributed to a reassertion of feminist narratives in contemporary visual culture. This, combined with emerging environmental awareness in response to the climate emergency, has enabled a critical reappraisal and new appreciation of previously overlooked artistic figures whose resonance with the present is just beginning to be celebrated. […] Sjöö is an artist who is strikingly current today, whose work resonates strongly with present concerns about climate change, social equity and justice, and the place of women in global culture. Believing that humans are inseparable from nature, and with a strong sense of interconnectedness with the Earth, she sounded an early warning of ecological collapse. As a pioneering feminist, she asserted the rights of all women, classes, and sexualities, and placed a woman’s right to her body at the top of her artistic agenda.

Sjöö’s pictures are grounded within the female body, an area of artistic exploration previously excluded from early Swedish art history, where focus had been on a more modernistic expressionism, often focusing on male artists. Her work could also be seen as a criticism of patriarchal society. Even if the 1970s was considered the decade of woman’s liberation, Sjöö, in 1973, barely escaped being prosecuted for her painting God Giving Birth (1968, oil on panel, 185 x 125 cm, MAN/Museum Anna Nordlander, Skellefteå, Sweden) when it was exhibited in United Kingdom. The painting was removed from display, no less than, three times: from Drury Lane in 1969, at the St Ives Arts Council festival in 1971 and, finally, Swiss Cottage Library in 1973.

Sjöö’s art was thus not only political but also viewed as blasphemous and obscene! Censorship merely strengthened Sjöö in her resolve to portray female experiences in her art. Rejecting abstract art as a western male privilege, she asked herself: “How does one communicate women’s strength, struggle, rising up from oppression, blood, childbirth, sexuality – in stripes and triangles?”. In connection with the exhibition Monica Sjöö -The Great Cosmic Mother, Moderna Museet in Sweden wrote the following about Our Bodies Ourselves:

Monica Sjöö’s painting is a tribute to sexual liberation, propagating for women’s right to their own body. The painting shares its title with the textbook “Our Bodies, Ourselves”, about women’s health, compiled by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. Commercially published in 1973, it swiftly gained great popularity and was translated into multiple languages. The book provides sexual education and information about sexual orientation, gender identity, birth control, menstruation, abortion, pregnancy and birth, violence, abuse, and menopause. It was considered revolutionary for its time as it encouraged sexual freedom, the use of contraception, lesbian sexuality, and sexual independence. Today, several editions later, it is viewed as a feminist classic.

Provenance

The Estate of Monica Sjöö.

Alison Jacques Gallery, London.

Firestorm.

Exhibitions

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Monica Sjöö -The Great Cosmic Mother, 13 May – 15 October 2023.

Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom, Monica Sjöö -The Great Cosmic Mother, 18 November 2023 – 25 February 2024.

Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, Monica Sjöö -The Great Cosmic Mother, 23 March – 8 September 2024.

Literature

Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother. Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, 1987, illustrated p. 389.

(Eds.) Jo Widoff & Amy Budd, Monica Sjöö. The Great Cosmic Mother, exhibition catalogue, Moderna Museet, Stockholm/Malmö, Sweden & Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom, 2023, illustrated full spread in colour, pp. 46-47.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation