19 Mar What women look like

English sculptor and prop maker Jamie McCartney arranged 400 plaster casts of vulvas into a nine-meter polyptych, to be displayed at the Brighton Festival Fringe in May. The project took five years and a quarter ton of plaster. Subjects ranged in age from 18 to 76, and included mothers, daughters, identical twins, transgendered men and women, one woman before and after giving birth, and another before and after labiaplasty (a practice McCartney hopes his exhibition will discourage).

For many women their genital appearance is a source of anxiety and I was in a unique position to do something about that. Vulvas and labia are as different as faces and many people, particularly women, don’t seem to know that.

Subjects talk about the project in this video; McCartney in this one.