Park Foundation Music App

Home > Artists

Wollita

Performance art project by [a=Françoise Cactus]. Wollita (a pun on Vladimir Nabokov's book "Lolita" and "Wolle", the German word for wool) is a life-sized puppet model of Cactus as a half-nude woman, crotcheted from wool and based on descriptions of prostitutes in classified ads. It was made for the 2004 art exhibition "When Love Turns to Poison" and intended as a critique of the objectification of women. The puppet was heavily featured in a campaign by the Berlin-based conservative tabloid newspaper "B.Z." which claimed that the exhibition and its artists were promoting pedophilia. The Berlin alternative art scene reacted with protests and performances. The whole story was eventually turned into a satirical "autobiography" of Wollita, written by Cactus and [a=Wolfgang Müller], and a few songs by [a=Stereo Total], the band of Cactus and [a=Brezel Göring].