In 2018, on the heels of the Me Too Movement, I decided to make art again after a decade-long hiatus. My art practice has always combined autobiography, feminism and text as well as craft forms traditionally coded as feminine (like sewing). All that continues in this body of work.

My original concept was to stitch the words men had said to me into condoms, but, alas, that proved too difficult. So I pivoted to men’s briefs, specifically Calvin Kleins and later Ralph Laurens for the beaded pieces.

I’ve always had a permeable sense of self. The boundary between the outside world and myself is tenuous at best—I’m overly sensitive, overly susceptible, overly sincere. When someone tells me something about myself, I take it as gospel truth rather than as a projection of or defense for the other person. It can sometimes take years, decades even, for me to realize that crappy statement was in fact not about me at all.

That’s where Things Men Said to Me comes in. When I first began this project, I saw the stitched briefs as shields that could protect me from men’s arrow-like statements to my heart and sense of self. Something to hide behind and redirect back to the men. The quotes stopped being about me and instead became about them or, more specifically, their genitalia. Every stitch into the crotch felt vindictive, almost violent. A socially sanctioned way of embodying my inner Lorena Bobbit.

But as I kept working on the project, something in me changed. Maybe it was therapy, maybe it was one of those delayed epiphanies. The underwear weren’t shields; they were mirrors. Mirrors of straight men: my dad, exes, strangers. Now, instead of anger, I feel something between pity and compassion for them. A bruise on the heart.

I thought I would create a handful of these for some pop-up art shows I was doing and then maybe move on to something else. But, the sad reality is, this project is the gift that keeps on giving. I’ll be minding my own business and then—wham—another doozy. Now, instead of feeling bereft, I get a bolt of excitement. I pull out my phone and save it to my notes.

Each of the pieces tells a short story. Who said it and either where it occurred, if in person, or through which mode of communication. The text on the underwear, coupled with the full titles, paints a fuller and sometimes more complicated picture. This work is comedic and devastating. Infuriating and entertaining. It toggles between one uneasy feeling and another and back again, which is why it’s kept going for so long.

This exhibition is based on things men said to me only, but I’ve started to collect things men have said to other women and to each other about women and girls. With the unveiling of the Epstein files, this work feels more urgent.

Because words matter. They shape our reality of the world, each other and ourselves. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”