Baubô

Small, outside the canons. The belly becomes a face, the face becomes a sex. Baubô comes from the Eleusinian mysteries. When Demeter refuses to eat after Persephone's abduction, it is she who lifts her skirt and makes the grieving goddess laugh. The gesture crosses mythologies: Ame-no-Uzume outside Amaterasu's cave in Japan, the Sheela-na-gig on the lintels of Ireland's Romanesque churches, Hathor making Ra laugh in Egypt. Wherever a vulva was needed to deliver from the dark.

Most visitors take her for a male figure. This ambivalence is exactly the subject. She is woman, and beyond.