A guided journey through OSUGA’s exhibition on women’s bodies, desire, and pleasure.

We’d like to invite you to do something simple — and brave.
Walk with us. Push open the door of the Chinese Museum of Sexual Culture, and step into a space where modern women finally speak about sex and pleasure in their own voices.

Our exhibition, “The Door: An Illustrated Guide to Women’s Bodies, Desire, and Pleasure,” brings the most familiar spaces of daily life into the museum — the bathroom, the study, and the bedroom. Each space becomes a gentle invitation: to see, to think, and to feel.

As you move through these rooms, we hope you begin a quiet conversation with your own body — perhaps the first truly honest one.

1. The Bathroom: Seeing Your Body, Gently

You first pass through a symbolic threshold—the “Door of the Clitoris.” On the other side is a private bathroom, warm and quiet—a place that feels safe.

Here, the invitation is simple: look at yourself.

Many women wash their bodies every day—yet have never really seen their vulva. Shame, silence, and cultural restraint have made the most ordinary part of our bodies feel distant and unnamed.

In this intimate room, artist Wang Shuyi helps us soften that distance. Her work, “The Wish of Sun and Dew,” is a mirror shaped from the gentle curves of the female genital form. Sunlight symbolizes strength and liberation; dew signifies desire and nourishment. Standing before it, the reflection is not about judgment—it is about awakening.

A reminder: pleasure, comfort, curiosity, and tenderness all live in the same body. Here, looking becomes an act of self-acceptance.

2. The Study: Thinking About What We Were Taught—and What We Weren’t

We leave the bathroom and enter a quieter, contemplative space—a study.
Shelves, paper, letters, and soft light invite you to slow down.

At the center stands artist Sun Xindi’s installation, “Touchable Letter.” The piece gathers handwritten letters from 35 women, reflecting on their real experiences growing up in environments where sex education was incomplete—or absent. Their stories are layered on translucent paper, overlapping like memories that were whispered instead of spoken.

You may notice how words blur into one another. This layering symbolizes the way social rules have repeatedly covered, softened, or erased women’s feelings.

Reading these letters, something shifts. Desire is no longer only biology—it is history, culture, shame, confusion, shame again, and eventually, courage.

The study asks: If no one ever taught us how to think about pleasure—how did we learn to judge it?

3. The Bedroom: Facing Pleasure Without Fear

Finally, we enter the bedroom—soft fabrics, dim light, and flowing forms.

Artist Youvi Chow transforms the space with painted curtains that move gently as you walk. The body dissolves into color and shadow, stretching and reforming—just as women’s understanding of pleasure has evolved over time.

Alongside the artwork, the exhibition traces a timeline: from an era when female desire was pathologized as “hysteria,” to a present where sexual health, anatomy, and pleasure are understood as essential parts of wellbeing.

And yes—here we display pleasure products, openly and unapologetically. Not as taboos, but as tools for self-knowledge.

The message is quiet, but firm: Once the door to female pleasure opens, it can no longer be closed.

4. Beyond History—Toward Dialogue

Walking through this exhibition, you may notice something missing from many historical collections: women’s voices, women’s emotions, women’s pleasure.

For centuries, cultural narratives disciplined the body while ignoring its inner life. OSUGA’s presence here fills part of that absence—not to overwrite history, but to stand beside it.

Ancient objects meet modern ideas.
Authority becomes conversation.
Judgment becomes curiosity.

And in that space, women become subjects, not symbols.

We warmly invite you to stand in front of each “door,” and talk with the person who matters most—yourself.
To approach your body with honesty.
To hold desire with respect.
To see pleasure as natural, healthy, and bright.

Because when women understand their own bodies, they reclaim their stories—gently, powerfully, and forever.