Book 33   Needle Girls Penn, C. (2009) (Fig. 31). Unique artist’s book.  Photograph Book.  Photographs from collaborative book with Marianne Meijer.  Needles, pins, thorns, razor blades, nails, staples, screws, bandage, turpentine, oil paint, thread. 10cm x 20cm  x  17cm wide.  Book 33. Collection: Cheryl Penn.

This book was an extension of the work Histrionic Alphabet and other Arbitrary Images (Book 10). When I first worked on Histrionic Alphabet, I had intended the book to be about the emotional/hormonal change that can take place in people  resulting in  madness, or self inflicted  bodily harm.  To me, the completed, collaborative artist’s book  did not convey this inner turbulence. Histrionic Alphabet was photographed and these photographs became the basis for the new book Needle Girls.

‘Needle Girls’ is a term given to a peculiar type of self-mutilation in which people pierce themselves with needles, pins and thorns.  For example, there is a recorded case of a young woman in Copenhagen in the early 1800’s who had 217 needles extracted from her body in the course of eighteen months, and another 100 more were extracted from a tumor in her shoulder (Gould, 2002). Dr. Favazza (1996:148)  theorizes that “the skin is the ultimate border between a person and the outside world and in modifying this border, a person exercises a level of control of or communication with the relationship his/her body has with the outside world”.

I treated the pages of the book as one of these troubled people would treat their body, physically cutting, tearing and inserting pins, thorns and needles into the pages.