Bawdy Houz
To explore the body as a language is to admit that knowledge is as much about pleasure, sexuality, touch, movement, laughter, and flesh as it is about thought.
San Francisco born artist, Sara Bermudez, founded Bawdy Houz in 2023 as an art house dedicated to theory-informed, art production. With a B.A. in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Brown University and in pursuit of her Masters Degree of Philosophy from San Francisco State University, her practice explores the body and social landscape in similitude.
Textures of nature, decolonial thought, and the poetics of embodiment, each series moves between drawing and painting, poem and short story, theory, and sensory experience. Bawdy Houz approaches art as inquiry, a desire for intimacy, and a place to direct anger.
dealing with sexual matters in a comical way; humorously indecent.
“The name ‘Bawdy Houz’ was inspired by my time reading “Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America” by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman. Learning about the history of sexuality in the United States had a profound influence on the way I visually studied the body. A ‘bawdy house’ or a brothel is a significant liminal space for intersectional issues such as race, class, gender, and sex. It is where sex and economics form a bond.
Bawdy Houz is an evolvement from my first art identity, which went by the name ‘The Body By Sara.’ I created it in 2020, after a concussion injury and during the pandemic.”
Sara Bermudez
Creator of Bawdy Houz
11 x 17 in
pencil on paper
This piece expresses a self-portrait embedded in the coastal landscape where I live. The inspiration for the art blossomed from the question, “What would I think of myself from the perspective of existing in the sky?”
It is the physical opposite of being grounded on Earth. I imagined what it would be like to look down at myself, at the scale of an ant. Maybe I would notice my physical movement as the expression of a liminal mind.
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gradual
transformative beauty
of misunderstanding
and beginning the journey
of truly understanding
question your
anger
rage
resentment
sorrow
question its arsenic presence
in your human connections
embrace it all
oh how much more we can understand
when we can misunderstand
misjudgement decomposes
creating a new life to pursue
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