The Origin of the World (2005 – ongoing)
Work by Syd Krochmalny
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An investigation into how male artists depict what they rarely see—and often cannot even name: the vulva.
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Taking Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde as a point of departure—a painting that paradoxically inaugurated modernity yet left no direct heirs—this project examines the enduring invisibility of female genitals in Western art history.
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Whereas breasts, buttocks, and the pubic mound have long enjoyed stable representational status, the vulva remains displaced, veiled, distorted, or simply absent.
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My ongoing series of charcoal drawings arose from a direct, disarming invitation posed to others:

"Could you draw a vagina in this sketchbook?"

 

The responses, far from producing any consensual image, reveal a visual map of hesitation, archetypal forms, and geometric symbols: ovals, triangles, rhombuses, spirals. Each stroke exposes as much about visual culture as about its blind spots.

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A video edited with the collected drawings showcases this repertoire of failed attempts, formal intuitions, and symbolic projections. The work challenges the supposed centrality of the phallus as the “empty signifier” and returns the question to the viewer:

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How does one draw what has been erased?