From Breast to Icon
Tetamundi as a Symbol of Power and Resistance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/umatica.2025.v8i8.21806Keywords:
Art, Hacking, Feminism, Popular Culture, IconAbstract
This project explores the origin, evolution, and impact of the Tetamundi, a work created in 2017 as part of a “breastcentric” speculative design exercise. Inspired by myths about the creation of the Milky Way, it transforms the female breast into a planetary symbol, displacing patriarchal narratives and proposing new symbolic futures. After its public appearance at the Benidorm Fest 2022 alongside Rigoberta Bandini, Tetamundi went viral and became a collective icon, sparking debates about authorship, cultural appropriation, and symbolic power. The project engages with artists who hack everyday objects to re-signify them, activating critical discourses on artifacts, the body, and power. Using the Visual Archive Research methodology, ideas are analyzed, connected, and extracted from the images, demonstrating how Tetamundi transcends its original context to become a dynamic entity continually reconfigured by the communities that adopt and reinterpret it. Through its visual and symbolic hybridization, the planetary breast merges design, mythology, activism, and digital culture. This approach aligns with the spirit of contemporary hybrid practices, which blur the boundaries between disciplines and open new forms of expression at the intersection of languages and media.
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