Aida Silvestri Works loaned to the Museum of Sex

Autograph was loaning 3 works by artist Aida Silvestri from our collection to the Museum of Sex in New York City, for the exhibition Reclaiming & Making: Art, Desire, Violence.

The exhibition presented the artwork of 14 international female-identifying artists who have faced and challenged sexually motivated violence from the 1970s to the present day. Such artwork ask us to bear witness both to the reality and history of sexual trauma, and to the resiliency, agency, and power that survivors of such trauma manifest. Reclaiming and Making: Art, Desire, Violence aims to break the silence around these issues in the hopes of developing a safer, healthier, and more liberated sexual culture. This exhibition was organised by Emily Shoyer, Consulting Curator and Eve Arballo, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Sex.

Aida Silvestri's artworks were commissioned in 2016 by Autograph as part of her powerful series Unsterile Clinic, raising awareness of the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Inspired by personal experience, Silvestri began an in-depth investigation into the practice in 2015, and began interviewing and photographing women living in London. Silvestri’s sculptural photo-works are presented with text poems based on interviews conducted with participants whose personal testimonies provide harrowing insight into their experiences. Some have since undergone reconstructive or reversal procedures – which part-remedies the physical damage inflicted onto their bodies, yet the psychological and emotive scars remain in perpetuity.