Axillic Autoerotic (Homage to Ren Hang) is a short video performance by Bimbi. Stills are below, please contact to view.

Gendering by hair. 

Hair in the wrong place is revolting I am told. 

A young man says women shouldn’t have armpit hair, 

and it’s gross. 

In Albania, the women on the bus sneer and laugh at me. 

At home, my parents beg me to shave because a hairy armpit is indecent and unattractive. 

I love the dark forest there. 

I stir my anger into all the projections, expectations, judgement 

with my tongue. This is my body, 

the site of resistance. 

Axillic Autoerotic is a performance, an act of rebellion and self-adoration.

Patriarchy feeds off the power to decide how and when our bodies are worthy, desirable, tasteful, sexy, etc. Women and femmes are sexualized by men for nearly our entire lives. We must resign to this sexualization in a variety of ways in order to work, walk down the street, and be in public space. When we flip this societal rule on its head, taking ownership and control over our bodies and sexuality, we are seen as disgusting, “asking for it”, slutty, perverted, etc. The exceptions to this immoral projection occur when a man paints, portrays, photographs a woman’s body, or when it is used sell shoes, burgers, or some other commodity, and then it is a very particular representation that caters to what men consider desirable: the female body then is often manicured, hairless, youthful, skinny, white, and with straight hair. 

Shortly after filming video, a friend shares the work of Ren Hang with me. The cover of his artist book, posthumously published by Taschen, is a photo of his lover licking his own armpit. I am honored that this work is in conversation with another queer artist who also resisted against an authoritarian regime with subversive gestures of the body. Humor, absurdity, eroticism are a threat to order. In this work, the hair (and skin) is the medium. xo, Bimbi