Starr Figura: This is an untitled work by Eva Hesse. It's one of a number of hanging pieces that she made in early 1966 that features a sausage form, or sometimes it's called a boomerang or a gourd.
Hesse was one of a number of artists in the mid-60s who began using discarded materials, such as string or electrical tubing, or wires or ropes, or latex, and fashioning them into these almost absurd, very witty and often a little bit erotic sculptures.
What's fun about this piece is that it's abstract, but it's a very phallic kind of artwork. It's almost like a parody of a phallus.
Hesse did not like her work to be interpreted in any kind of a gender-based way. But at the same time, there is this kind of assertion of gender and this ownership that's taken in a powerful way over issues related to the body in this work.