How hating my period lead me to found Ctrl Art Del

During my first interview regarding Ctrl Art Del, which you’ll be able to read on the 16th of April on Art Zoom Magazine, I was asked if I decided to start this brand as a way to protest against the hypocrisy of our society and patriarchy. In reading that question I realised that Ctrl Art Del might have become the progressive project they were asking me about, but was it how it started?

Some of you might have read the short version of my “origin story”: after moving to Berlin in a particularly hard moment of my life, I studied German and did my best to try to get my mental and physical health back in shape. I finished my studies on a Thursday, and decided that I finally felt well enough to look for a job in my field: events. It was Thursday the 5th of March 2020, and we all know how this story ends: lockdown, no events, no jobs, declining mental and physical health. Bummer! This is when Ctrl Art Del was born: I started designing vulvas and tits on Photoshop, learnt how to 3D draw, designed more vulvas and tits, and voilà. 

But the truth is that, at that point, Ctrl Art Del was a journey of personal growth and nothing more. I didn’t start it to fight society’s hypocrisy or other people’s patriarchal attitudes towards women’s bodies, I started it because I found vulvas gross and it feltwrong. I hated my boobs and my butt and it feltwrong. I feltdirty when I was on my period and it feltwrong. I was ashamed of my sexuality and it feltwrong. I had internalised so much of that bullshit that we have been taught, that I felt the only way out was to find my own way to love my body, to love myself, to live my womanhood.So I tried a “fake it until you make it” approach: celebrating vulvas, boobs, periods, sex, even though inside of me there was still resistance. 

What happened next, I was absolutely not ready for. People were loving my art, buying my creations, asking for prints. They were seeing my liberation from the patriarchy as their own. They were believing in what I was saying before I could even believe it myself. That’s when the snowball effect started: the more you believed in me, the more I believed in myself, the more I was inspired and the more I created. I kept taking steps before I was ready, and you kept being behind me and supporting my every leap.

When I tell you Ctrl Art Del is a community, that’s what I mean. When I thank you for your comments and support, this is what I am trying to tell you: I wouldn’t be here without you. As you love my art because it empowers you, I love your inputs because they empower me. Even as I keep creating empowering art, I still live daily in a world of fatphobia, of sexualising women’s bodies, of feeling oppressed and sometimes hopeless, as if our fight was already lost. But when I look at my page and see people parading around vulva shaped necklaces, feeling empowered by my creations, seeing themselves represented in what I make and write, everything gets easier and a weight is lifted from my shoulders: the weight of having to fight my demons alone. 

So I guess what started as an origin story morphed into a love letter to all of the people that interact with me daily, and support my efforts by commenting, leaving reviews, buying and sending words of encouragement and love. You are my strength, you are this brand’s heart, you’re the best siblinghood I could hope for.