The Nude Body as Sacred Space Space

A Body – Sacred Spaces | Nude Body art (Vimeo version) | Kaunis – pyhät tilat (Vimeo-versio)

Original was uploaded on 2020-05-18

There are two concepts presented in this film. The first is that of the Yoni being a sacred place, as embodied in Tantric literature. The first instance of the Yoni being portrayed in “mainstream” art was Gustave Courbet’s masterpiece L’origine du monde (Origin of the world) in 1866. Scandalous for its time and for many decades thereafter, the painting was not seen by the general public until it was acquired by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and put on permanent display in the mid-1990’s. Yet the Yoni has always occupied a central place in human consciousness from time immemorial, regardless of the ebbs and flows of social acceptability. This film started as just another exercise in abstract bodyscapes, but quickly morphed into a celebration of the beauty of Yoni as it relates to the female form as a whole.

The second concept explored here is that of the Disembodied Hand. As a cinematic technique, the Disembodied Hand has been with us since the earliest days of movie making, indeed even in the silent film era. But the Disembodied Hand has been a part of human culture and understanding since Biblical times as recounted in the Book of Daniel, Chapter 5 – the handwriting on the wall. Throughout the ages and especially in religious art, various artists have made the Disembodied Hand a visual reality in the tradition of the handwriting on the wall. In cinema generally, the Hand has been portrayed as a portender of doom as it was in the Bible.

In our presentation, the Disembodied Hand takes on a different role. Instead of predicting Doom, it becomes an integral part of human experience, relying on the sense of touch to convey the essence of the female body as a source of pleasure for both genders, including and especially, the Yoni.