A Sexy Cat Girl & Big Dick Robot Boyfriend: The student daring to recreate porn in sculpture

Picture two worlds. In one lives a robot boyfriend and sex toy – the HIMBOT 3000. With three detachable dicks to choose from, he’s built better than man. Cordless, with an adjustable nozzle for how nice or mean you want him. He’s built for the kind of sex porn makes men think women desire.  

In another world, darker and animalistic, lives a cat girl ready for her man to walk through the door. “Welcome home, I’ve missed you so so much,” she lures. Smooth and contoured to perfection, she’s the idolised women. She’s the kind of woman porn trains men to desire.  

These two worlds, both created from critiques of the porn industry, are made by Miles Greville — the final year Fine Arts student breaking the ice with funny but confronting art. In May, both sculptures were displayed in an empty space turned gallery on Wellington’s Cuba Street.  

Miles’ work defies the patriarchy in an unusual way. Neither gender is seen as their true selves, neither get to be human. “Even the male gendered work was not allowed to be human.”  

Miles had debated bringing ideas surrounding porn into their work for a while, “But I was kind of just too scared to be like, ‘this is a real part of who I am’.” 

Porn has always existed — it's just evolved. Miles explores how the patriarchy has changed with the introduction of the internet porn.  

Erotic depictions are found throughout history, from cave drawings, paintings, and sculptures. But modern pornography didn’t exist until the Victorian era, where even just looking at images or objects depicting sex was outlawed in 1857. 

What once was carved into rock is now just a quick search online. With the freedom and accessibility of porn today, creative fetishes have blossomed — from cock and ball torture, blood kinks, knife play, to electrostimulation.  

Miles’ bent over sculpture depicts the ‘cat girl’ fetish. This has existed since the 1600s with the Japanese supernatural cats known as the bakeneko. Soon after, bakeneko prostitutes arose and the ‘cat girl’ fetish was born.  

Today, a popular PornHub search is ‘Sexy Anime Cat Girls’. These women/cats are treated as what they are — less than humans. Huge tits and asses paired with a tail and ears creates a submissive pet for men. Miles had some help with the paws, tail, and ears, made by artist Josie Chadwick.

Miles is honestly raw about this, “As I thought about making this girl, there was this point of ‘I can recognise my own attraction to this types of fetish or subculture.’” Confronting these thoughts allowed Miles to investigate the dehumanisation of women’s bodies.  

No face, bowing low, vagina up, smooth curves — the cat girl reveals how porn stars value comes from the physical attributes of their body. Miles reflected on how porn becomes a big part of people’s sexual engagement. “It kind of builds that entitlement to that being what they expect from someone.” 

Despite not identifying as a man, Miles found creating art which challenged the patriarchy difficult having grown up as a boy. “It was my main concern that people would believe I had no right. And I actually got so stressed out about it. I was having nightmares that I would come into the studio and it would be destroyed.”  

Miles questioned if their art was opening hard conversations or just furthering stereotypes. “Even though I’m trying to kind of comment on things like the way men see women. I’m still coming from someone who grew up male and specifically had issues with things like pornography.”  

Within the same project was the HIMBOT, but these confronted different thoughts – ones of Miles own insecurities.  

Miles’ description of the robot on their Instagram reads: “Not getting what you want in bed and finally done with the emotional inadequacy of the lesser gender? If so, the HIMBOT 3000(™) may be for you!” 

It incites the idea that women just feel like giving up on men. But Miles wants to challenge this, “We shouldn’t be at this point where one of the genders just feels as though they can never get through to or be seen by or really connect with the other.” 

The classic debate of ‘does size matter?’ is at the heart (or the crotch) of the robot. The robot comes with three different screw-on dildos’ -- a satirical play on absurd sex toys. Miles says men are trained to believe a huge penis equals their value, and they project this insecurity onto women. 

“I can still see the parts of me that are masculine within it in that it’s almost like partially a reflection of the fears of a man like that — they would be replaced by this big, muscular figure with a giant fucking penis.”  

But Miles didn’t want to disregard their ignorance, instead using it to critique their work, “I’m portraying it as this thing for women, but it’s made by masculine thoughts.”  

“A product for woman to replace men, but made by men.” 

Regardless of gender, Miles knew they weren’t coming from a bad place, “If this was the way I was feeling, it’s because it’s important”.  

Fears of their work being destroyed eased when the sculptures were put on display, leaving interpretations up to the audience — which was mostly positive. “I think that even someone whose made a very great attempt at challenging the patriarchy, if their audience is unwilling or unable to recognise that then it's just not going to work anyway.” 

With exaggerated sex tropes, Miles confronted how internet porn changed the patriarchy. They brought their projected ideas of what men want for themselves and what they think women want to the surface.  

While most are letting these thoughts run rampant behind closed doors with PornHub in a private tab, Miles was brave enough to confront this in public.

Dildos, cat ears, titties and all.