Soap or Being Raised on Avon.

2002.

The artist book Soap or Being Raised on Avon takes a humorous look at the early experience of having one's mouth washed out with soap for saying bad words. Carrying a sweet and pleasant fragrance, the hand-made soap bars embody some of the foul language in memory and physically through embossed text in German and English.

Edition of 10.

Excerpt of the text:
It never struck me as strange. I just assumed that every child had to submit to this. My siblings and I never questioned it, just as you would not question a law of nature. If your apple rolled off the table, of course it would fall. You might complain about your bruised apple, but you would not doubt the law of gravity. By the same laws of nature, if we used bad language, my mother would materialize out of nowhere, and even before we could comprehend the full scope of the situation, we had a mouth full of soapy foam. Need I say that we watched our language?

 

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