Coquelicot Mafille, "Le deuxième sexe", Simone de Beauvoir, Ed. Gallimard, Paris, 1949 with a drawing taken from the painting by Joseph Lorusso, 2020.

Embroidery and print on original drawing paper, 20x30 cm.

Coquelicot Mafille was born in Paris in 1975 and currently lives and works in Milan. With a degree in Political Science, she has exhibited in Italy, France, Turkey, Morocco and in some artistic residences including 59Rivoli in Paris. She uses a variety of different mediums, including embroidery and writing, on canvas, fabric, paper, urban walls and shop windows, with thread, paint and adhesive.

My artistic research revolves around play, dreamlike dimensions, spaces for language, Nature and the nature of human relationships. My work has a nomadic and poetic vision and encourages perspective from memory and everyday life, by investigating heterochrony and heterotopia, overlapping and mixing the order of things. I recount human, animal and plant moments, made up of little things, gestures and pauses, expectations and life, mixed with the facts of history and politics, and the absurdity that comes from them. I examine the concept of identity: its multiple derivations, its continuous interweaving with existential perception, its intimate and shared overlapping.

This artwork is part of the Viva la Vulva by Nuvenia project: a collective exhibition by international artists that aims to break down taboos linked to the female body in conjunction with an online charity auction in favor of the Italian Red Cross. The works will be on display at Six Gallery in Milan from 9 to 11 October.

"We are born free from taboos. We live in a society that forces them upon us, feeding stereotypes. Talking about them helps to break them down and learn to accept each other: because we are all perfect precisely because we are different".