J'ouis Sens

In “J’ouis Sens”, an installation by Vera Lemecha, the female subject speaks but denies the viewer a logical reading of her narrative. “J’ouis Sens” can be translated as “I hear meaning” and is a play on the word joissance. It has been remarked that joissance has no direct translation in English but has been interpreted to mean “orgasmic ecstasy”.  Our gender is inscribed as feminine or masculine partially through our identification with the representations that surround us. This exhibition addresses the issue of female subjecthood and its inextricable ties to a socially-constructed sexuality. J’ouis Sens is an installation consisting of appropriated images, poetic texts and an audio track. The work in J’ouis Sens attempts to speak to women by proposing a position for the female viewer within the articulation of the text, thereby emphasizing the subject – in- process. A photo installation combining eight cibiachrome images, text pieces and audio tape. The work attempts to deal with the question: “How do women artists speak to the question of female sexuality without reinforcing the cult of the biological woman or further eliminating women in the more of patriarchal discourse, the text?”