The Holy Vulva

There is a moment when people first encounter The Holy Vulva.

Some see the Virgin Mary.

Others simply see a beautiful, symmetrical form.

Then, slowly, another image begins to emerge.

The moment of recognition is often accompanied by surprise.

Sometimes delight.

Sometimes discomfort.

That moment is where the work begins.

Not because the image is intended to provoke, but because it invites us to notice how deeply symbols shape the way we see the world.

The Holy Vulva began with a question.

What happened to one of humanity's oldest symbols?

Long before the written word, the vulva appeared in cave art, carved into stone and woven through mythology across many ancient cultures. Although we cannot know exactly what these images meant, they suggest that the female body once occupied a very different place within the human imagination. It was associated not only with birth and fertility, but with mystery, creation and life itself.

Today those symbols are largely absent from our visual culture.

The female body continues to be represented in countless ways, yet very rarely with reverence.

That absence fascinated me.

As a designer, I have spent much of my career thinking about symbols. A successful logo becomes instantly recognisable because it carries meaning beyond the image itself. Religious icons do something similar. They become vessels for memory, belief and identity.

I began wondering what a contemporary icon of the sacred feminine might look like.

Not an archaeological reconstruction.

Not a goddess from the past.

Not a rejection of religious tradition.

But a new symbol for our own time.

One that acknowledges the visual language we have inherited while gently expanding it.

The Holy Vulva deliberately echoes the tenderness and symmetry we often associate with Marian iconography. For many people, the familiarity of that language creates a sense of reverence before they realise what they are looking at.

That moment matters.

It asks whether the female body might also be worthy of reverence.

Not instead of existing symbols.

Alongside them.

Throughout history, symbols have continually evolved. They have been adapted, transformed and reimagined as cultures changed. Some disappeared. Others survived because they found new forms.

I wonder whether our own culture is asking for new symbols.

Not to erase the past.

But to speak to the present.

The Holy Vulva is one response to that question.

It is not intended to shock or persuade.

It is an invitation.

An invitation to look again.

To consider what we choose to make visible.

To ask which stories our symbols continue to tell, and which stories they no longer hold.

Perhaps the role of contemporary iconography is not simply to preserve what has been.

Perhaps it is to create the images that future generations will inherit.