The Monstrous Feminine

The vagina dentata—the “toothed vagina”—has appeared in stories across cultures and centuries, often whispered as a warning, a myth steeped in fear. For generations, these tales have carried patriarchal anxieties about female desire, shaping women’s bodies into spaces to be controlled, tamed, or feared.

I have been developing a piece titled: “The Vagina Dental: by Consent Only” which I will be submitting to a London group show in March.

This work turns that fear on its head. Here, the vagina dentata becomes a symbol of autonomy, of self-determination. The teeth are not weapons—they are a language of consent, a quiet insistence that intimacy is never assumed, never taken, but offered and received on a woman’s own terms.

Made from soft yarn and pliable wire—materials that hold shape yet bend with ease—the sculpture reflects the tension at the heart of femininity: strength and resilience tempered by flexibility, vulnerability held within form. Threads of red loop and repeat, drawing on the visual language of talismans, objects meant to protect, mark boundaries, and hold power. These gestures do not belong to a single tradition; they evoke a broader, almost universal sense of objects charged with intention and presence.

Presented as a child’s mobile, the piece sways gently, a reminder of how stories and symbols shape us from the very beginning—how cultural narratives seep quietly into our understanding of bodies, desire, and power, carried forward across generations. It asks us to see myths not just as warnings, but as vessels, capable of holding strength, autonomy, and the possibility of new meanings.