Rosebud # 13 Elena Tejada-Herrera

In Rosebud #13 we present work by Elena Tejada-Herrera in relation to the exhibition Yes, There Will Be Singing In Dark Times by Lydia Schouten. Both presentations highlight the female position and non-conventional sexual desires in a playful way.

This Woman Sexual Fantasies Series (2006-2013) and Postporn Homage (2013) by Elena Tejada-Herrera consist of a for the artist typical, colorful and bustling sequence of images, full with glitches, visual effects and sounds. The work shows a wide array of sexual fantasies that go beyond heterosexual and also anthropocentric narratives. Composed in ‘streets’ as the artist refers to it, she presents content collected from blogs, websites and social media pages of (women and queer) artists that are involved in post-pornography. The work is an homage to them and a celebration of sexuality in a broad sense.

Post-porn is a trend that emerged in the mid-1980s as a reaction to the then booming traditional and commercial pornography but also as a counter-reaction to feminists’ rejection of porn. The post-porn movement went beyond normative, mainstream porn. It created a new visual language in which there was room for deviant desires and promoted the sexual liberation of so-called dissident bodies. Most of all, it celebrated sex as an emancipatory tool. Tejada-Herrera considers herself part of this movement.

The artist has been making post-porn videos for two decades already, and created collective performances, such as Turn On (2009), in which she invited the audience to present their sexual fantasies. This resulted in scenes that served as alternatives to mainstream pornography, with the purpose to delve into pornographic visual languages from a queer and feminist perspective. Today she is part of a collective of female identified artists and she works with a group of sexual dissident friends.