Sarah Lucas a member of the Young British Artists is best known for her work that uses furniture as a substitute for the human body with such works as Bitch and Pauline Bunny. Her provocative work uses "humour, visual puns and sexual metaphor to discuss sex, death, Englishness and gender." I was drawn to Lucas' creative use of material and edgy message. How she uses objects that I would have never even crossed my mind when thinking about art. One such example is her work Is Suicide Genetic? (1996) in which Lucas photographed the inside of a rusted toilet on which she had written "Is suicide genetic?" on the inside of the bowl. Similar to Tracey Emin, it is obvious that Lucas has a message she wants to show the world and she doesn't care who it offends. Lucas is also well known for her self-portrait photography such as Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, Self Portrait with Mug of Tea, and Eating a Banana. Lucas describes that in each of these portraits she uses her masculine appearance and 'machoness' to her advantage in order to comment on gender, sexuality, and defiant femininity. Lucas' explains that she is interested in the concepts of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his theory of drives such as a sex drive and a death drive. Lucas incorporates these ideas successfully into her own work and explores them through her own media. I admire Sarah Lucas because her work is not about being pretty or even ascetically pleasing but rather it is a means to ask a question to make the audience think.
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