Vagina Skatepark

  • Visual research at the Ed Benedict Skatepark in Portland, OR, 2009.
  • Social/sculptural research at Skate Like a Girl in Portland, OR, 2009.
  • Visual research at the Burnside Skatepark in Portland, OR, 2009.
  • Visual research at the Burnside Skatepark in Portland, OR, 2009.
  • Visual research at the Burnside Skatepark in Portland, OR, 2009.
  • Vagina Skatepark model with finger-boards, Disjecta, Portland, OR, 2010.

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Vagina Skatepark is an ongoing collaboration with Lori Gilbert.  This project exists as a series of developmental phases (including: fundraising, collaboration/consultation with skatepark design/builders as well as small, stand-alone works that investigate related avenues of inquiry.  The final iteration of Vagina Skatepark will be a permanent, functional site for skateboarding. Complete with skate-able anatomical features, this massive installation will function as a social sculpture, a limitless series of performances and an architectural intervention.

What we are working on now:

- consultations with builders, architects, designers

- consultations with local and international skaters including the local, all-woman chapter of ‘Skate Like a Girl’

- creating vagina skatepark scale-models and three dimensional drawings

- related research surrounding architecture, space and the body, gender and sport, etc.

- looking at existing skateboarding sites (Who are they built by? Where are they located?)

- looking for locations to build a (permanent or dismantle-able) vagina skate-park or bowl

- finding allies in both art sites/venues, as well as in civic institutions

- fundraising

Please contact vaginaskatepark@gmail.com for more information.

Related events and exhibitions:

Grown Ups, Disjecta, Portland, Oregon, 2010.

Related Reviews and Publications:

Mundell, Mel. ‘Vagina Skatepark’ Bitch Magazine, No.49, Winter 2010. Page 23.

More text:

“What has board-sliding labia, vagina bowl and clitoral stall potential?  Vagina Skatepark – a radical, skateable, vulva-shaped flow park by Portland, Oregon artists Lori Gilbert and Hannah Jickling.  The artists are pictching the project to galleries and Parks and Rec alike, with a mission to encourage more girls and women to skate.  Portland is at the intersection of skater-made culture and indie feminism, and it’s also a city where more than a dozen skateparks are scheduled for construction over the next five years.  So it only makes sense that one of them should be boldly, explicitly female.”

-Mel Mundell, Bitch Magazine, Portland, OR, 2010.