Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger
Sexuality is the domain where art may be articulated, since we enter both art and sex via the same 'hole' in the Real (1), to use Lacan's expression, through which bodily experience, drive and jouissance are also presented to the subject . . . An artwork attaches, suspends or creates desire. An object mysteriously embodies a space in this hole. A drive awakes where an artobject joins forces with interior objects, by-passing repression and regression at the price of approaching dangereously primary sources of Unheimlich—of uncanny anxiety, and appealing to us as beauty or horror, or beauty and horror, inviting the viewer to follow it into an unknown, invisible space—yet inside the visible—interlaced by the artist; inviting the viewer to abandon defences and to weave into the work its own invisible threads—its affect, phantasy, engagement, knowledge.
Copyright © 1999, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, all rights reserved
