RAISING EYEBROWS TO RAISE AWARENESS

RAISING EYEBROWS TO RAISE AWARENESS
Announcing Vagina Festival: a visual and performance art experience, celebrating women and raising awareness about the pervasiveness of violence against women.

Raised eyebrows are often the response when artist-activist, Alexandra Jacoby describes her work. For the last six years, she’s been working on a book of vagina portraits, documentary photographs for women, so we can see ourselves for ourselves. According to Jacoby, “Most women have not seen their own, much less others.”

The raised eyebrows only last a few seconds, as Jacoby passionately relates the wide-ranging conversations that arise from presenting this still-taboo, and surprisingly unfamiliar body part shared by half the world’s population. From playful to informative to poignant and moving…the conversations spiral outward – and draw you in.

This February, you’re invited to put your 2-cents in, view the v-portraits and more at Vagina Festival – a visual and performance art experience, celebrating women and raising awareness about a painful and all-too-pervasive part of the vagina-conversations: violence against women. The festival is part of V-Day's Worldwide Campaign 2007.

Vagina Festival will take place the weekend of Feb. 16-18, 2007 at Agni Gallery, 170 East 2nd Street, Manhattan. “We’re going to line the gallery walls with visual art and throughout the Festival present performance art, song, dance, as well as two performances of The Vagina Monologues.

Vagina Festival is a space where people can come together and women's stories can be told, celebrating women, peace, creativity and collaboration.

We look forward to a fun, moving thought-provoking event, stimulating conversation that continues beyond the weekend experience!”

Proceeds will be donated to V-Day to support its efforts to end violence against women worldwide. While Vagina Festival is for and about women, it warmly welcomes men.

Would you like to participate?

SEEKING VOLUNTEERS
If you would like to be part of creating a spectacular event, please go to http://www.vaginafestival.com/participate.html and fill out a participation form.

We're seeking:
•    information/inspiration goody-bag crew
•    a street team to post flyers and hand out invites
•    a set-up and take-down crew
•    a team to keep things running smoothly during the festival, including ticket-takers
•    conversation-starters during the festival
•    help with spreading the word online about the festival
•    production crew for performances of The Vagina Monologues
•    help with lining up sponsors and affiliate organizations, artists, speakers and performers
•    and  more! Got an idea? We'd love to hear it.

ABOUT ALEXANDRA JACOBY –
Alexandra Jacoby is an artist-activist, living in NYC. Since Sept. 2000, her primary focus has been making vagina portraits. Jacoby has made 64 v-portraits so far and plans to publish them in a book, vagina vérité™ - an unabashed exploration of the plain, ordinary, mysterious matter of vaginas. To learn more about vagina vérité™ , please go to http://www.vaginaverite.com. To download Jacoby’s CV: http://www.vaginaverite.com/art/AlexandraJacoby-CV-0610.pdf

ABOUT V-DAY –
V-Day is a global movement that supports anti-violence organizations throughout the world, helping them to continue and expand their work, while drawing public attention to the larger fight to stop worldwide violence (including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual slavery) against women and girls. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $40 million and educated millions about the issues of violence against women and girls. V-Day was established by Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues”. For more on V-Day, please go to http://www.vday.org.