Li Xinmo has stated that Vagina Memories was inspired by Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues. The play includes accounts of women’s suffering during war, as well as their experiences with childbirth, violence, and other hardships. Li Xinmo integrates her own experiences, revealing the pain, rather than the joy, that women often experience during childbirth and miscarriages. These painful, unhappy experiences are precisely those that comprise women’s truest, most private moments. They use the pain of being torn apart to look forward to the emergence of new life.
The publication of this series of works provoked numerous debates, most of which involved analyses of these violent, bloody, and direct images. Interestingly, most of those praising the work were women, while most of the critiques came from men. The paper version of this work, which has the same title, was banned at three consecutive art exhibits. The last time this occurred was at the Sunshine Gallery’s “Contemporary International Art” Exhibit, where members of the National Security Bureau were rumored to have investigated the work.
