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"All of my art has a sexual connotation. Art that doesn’t have this has no reason to exist. I come at it from many directions, and so my work must tease, satisfy, and suffer, and provoke feelings of guilt in the person who views it." This is how Madeleine Berkhemer describes her artistic drive. In the mixed material sculptures typical of her oeuvre, but also in her performances, photo collages, and drawings, she breaks the female body down into its individual parts, stretches it out in space, and creates sensual and at the same time uncanny fleshy structures. In the process, she plays a humorous game involving materials – such as the tights used here – and colors that have female connotations, drawing on the defamiliarization of the body as explored in Surrealism. In this way, Berkhemer appropriates the sexualized, voyeuristic, and pornographic gaze from a feminist perspective.