Origins of the Universe Dimensioning

In this body of work, Origins of the Universe (2018-2021) I reference both Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde (Origin of the World), and the contemporary fad of 3D printing sculptural holders for smartphones. Courbet's painting was scandalous in the nineteenth century and even in the twenty-first century postings of the painting have led to Facebook account suspensions. Conversely, on certain sites 3D-printed smartphone holders of the sexualized female body proliferate. Nonetheless, females' contributions to physics, engineering, computer science, and art receive more and more equal billing. In my version of an origin narrative, I have expanded Courbet's "world" to a "universe," a universe positioned between a woman's legs, looping videos of the cosmos on an iPhone. This does not signify biological determinism but represents the power of the "female archetype" across scientific and cultural realms. A quote by Sadie Plant sums it up. "When computers became the miniaturized circuits of silicon chips, it was women who assembled them . . . when computers were virtually real machines, women wrote the software on which they ran. And when computer was a term applied to flesh and blood workers, the bodies which composed them were female."