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In Spanish the word “hembra” means either female/feminine or the feminine, but it has the decided advantage of not implying meek and mild, prim and proper, nor sugar, spice nor necessarily even anything nice. For that reason, we Anglophones are better off calling it woman-ness, as in what makes a woman a woman, her haeccity, her quiddity, unique to each, but in some ineffable way perhaps shared by all.
This month’s Slice photographer, Giovanni Cervantes, created an ongoing photo, video, text – and, for Hooksexup, live feed! -- project called Hembra, seeking out particular cases of woman-ness and its expression through their sexuality.
His first project was a multimedia portrait of a woman named Corina, taken very candidly over the course of three weeks, catching her at her most brash, her most vulnerable, and every stage of undress in between. Delightfully dissipated, Corina drinks and clubs and staggers and jerks off with seemingly consistent abandon. To view and watch and read Hembra is genuinely to know Corina – and, yes, very much as a woman, in all the most complicated senses.
For Slice, Cervantes will be documenting and exploring the hembra and sexuality of a girl a week. What should you expect? The real, the raw, the revealing, and probably a lot of insight. Because in Corina’s words
Hembra is the animal part of a woman, the instinct of a woman, the sexual part of a woman. Hembra is the woman, and she sweats. Hembra is the woman, and she is naked. Hembra, says the woman, and leaves aside the usual concept of a woman, transforming herself into the basic, primitive, and simple. But she is not always simple. Just in the moment of being Hembra the woman is simple.
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