Clara Menéres' Woman-Earth-Life (1977) and the Politics of censorship, concealment and vandalism

The context in which works are not only produced but also received may have significant impact on the degree to which they exert influence Laura Castro speaks about the response to a work representing a goddess figure by a Portuguese feminist artist, Clara Menéres. Woman-Earth-Life, constituted from earth and plant matter, was frequently vandalised during its initial exhibition as part of the Alternativa Zero exhibition in Lisbon in 1977, and caused controversy when another version of the work was exhibited at the XIV Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil, in the same year. Opportunities were not taken up to retain the work when it was constructed for a third time in the gardens of Serralves Contemporary Art Museum in Porto in 1997. In her engagement with these iterations of the installation, Castro explores overt as well as more surreptitious forms of censorship and prejudice within the contexts of museums and exhibition spaces, revealing how these served as endeavours to suppress work deemed to be threatening and offensive to patriarchy.