Thermogram: Female Groin Area Body Print

Inscriptions

Signed, dated, and inscribed, in graphite, on reverse lower center: Sonia Sheridan early 1970s - "Crotch"

Label

Using technology and her own body to push the boundaries of representation, Sonia Landy Sheridan engaged with issues of gender through experimental art forms. During an artist residency at the 3M corporation in 1970, Sheridan explored the artistic possibilities of the company’s patented Color-In-Color printing technology. To create Self Portrait with Pig Foetus, she sandwiched a Color-In-Color print of her face and a pig fetus between plain paper and Thermo-Fax paper, using a hand iron to apply enough heat to produce an image on the plain paper before burning its edges with a match to create the jagged border. The imagery calls to mind procreation—particularly given that face and fetus are each enclosed within the womb-like shape of the hand iron.

Sheridan created Thermogram: Female Groin Area Body Print by putting grease on her body, then pressing and warming a piece of heat-sensitive paper over it. The rounded and voluptuous curves in this print recall the Venus of Willendorf, a small limestone statuette from around 28,000–25,000 BCE, which is believed to be a fertility figure or totem.

From the 2022 exhibition Embodied: Artist as Medium, curated by Isadora Italia, Campus Engagement Manager

Course History

WRIT 5, Memoirs of Family, Ellen Rockmore, Fall 2013

WGST 10, Sex, Gender, and Society, Giavanna Munafo, Fall 2013

WGST 37.2, GEOG 41, Gender, Space and Islam, Jennifer Fluri, Fall 2013

NAS 42, WGST 40, Gender Topics in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2013

ANTH 31, WGST 36, Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Lauren Gulbas, Fall 2013

NAS 42, WGST 40, Gender Topics in Native American Life, Vera Palmer, Fall 2013

SART 30, Photography II, Fall 2013

SART 29, Photography I, Fall 2013

WGST 18, Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Studies, Eng-Beng Lim, Winter 2015

Exhibition History

Embodied: Artist as Medium, Isadora Italia, MALS Class of 2022, Sol LeWitt Wall, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 1–December 17, 2022.

Shadowplay: Transgressive Photography from the Hood Museum of Art, Owen Robertson Cheatham and Friends Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 10-December 8, 2013.

Provenance

The artist, Hanover, New Hampshire; given to present collection, 2004.

Catalogue Raisonne

Sonia Landy Sheridan- Diane Kirkpatrick Hood Inventory List #315: 3M Thermo-Fax: female groin area body print "thermogram" 1970 [Note: grease is put on body, paper is pressed over and then heated. This was part of class project and arrow points up to the

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Subjects