Sheela and the Dildo Dancer

Spero tends to sample, much like a DJ, readymade art historical material and juxtapose it with images of her own invention. The artist appropriates not only subjects and motifs, but also forms and media, as seen here. The composition consists of handprinted images as well as pieces of cut and printed paper that Spero pasted onto two long, horizontal sheets of paper, a format indebted to both East Asian scrolls and architectural friezes from ancient Greece and Rome. Motifs common to other ages and other cultures proliferate: here we find dildo dancers derived from 5th century BC Greek vases, Celtic fertility figures called Sheela na gigs from the 11th and 12th centuries, and Hittite idols from the 14th-13th centuries BC. These figures, all of them female archetypes, form a semi-continuous procession that suggests the unfolding of a fantastic narrative. Together they serve as potent symbols of female power, vitality, and sexuality. Spero’s interest in salvaging such motifs from the past and in making them relevant for the present links her to other feminist artists active in the 1970s and 1980s.