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Open Mouths

Whether you open a magazine, glance through a clothes catalogue, look at advertisements at bus stops, on billboards or on scaffoldings: you see women with a dumb, horny look on their faces and their mouths open as if they say: ‘My mouth is already open, I can give you a blowjob.’

We are flooded by this kind of images and our society takes it for granted. Broekman thinks it’s shocking that women are still seen as lust objects, despite the sexual revolution of the sixties. Unfortunately, more than forty years later, sexual freedom for women still can not be taken for granted. On the contrary: thinking of women as objects seems to increase. Women even contribute to this idea, by behaving after the male fantasies about women. Those fantasies still seem to be dominant in the quest for a relationship or sexual affair. 

Broekman thinks this is a bewildering development, which she wants to draw attention to with this work of art. The work Open Mouths is composed of 45 faces of women with their mouths open. Each face measures 1 x 1 meter. These squares have been placed above each other in 3 rows of 15 pieces. The viewer sees a 3 meters high and 15 meters long wall of enlarged faces of women with their mouths open. This makes the viewer realize how absurd the expressions on the faces and the open mouths actually are. A text in which Broekman gives her opinion of contemporary body culture, female sexual looks and beauty ideals is placed over the 45 faces.