APPEARANCE AND ATTITUDEAS THE WOMB OF DIGNITY

Human Museum-Trocadero  » Feb -March 07 « – paris / Joburg Art Fair – Johannesburg  » March 2008″.

“Aferkiw” demonstrates in its total splendor its strong virtues which have been known to accompany women in ancient Africa, an era when women were heads of the family, village chiefs, tribal warriors, priestesses, pharaohs, queens, and possessors or certain absolute powers conferred upon them by the beyond…

(heads of Africa – women of the shadow and great royalty)

Of their actions in a body symbolizing the synthesis between ethnicity and gratitude released in timeless movements filled with aggressive, feline intensities formed in the shapes and curves that let our thoughts run free and return to that which represented their own civilization!!!

I created this “avenger- sculptor” with the memory of the women of the world constantly in my mind, especially “Solitude and Sofia”, in order to recreate the meeting of two civilizations.  The one for its insular real-life experience, its bravery, its courage as mother and arising from the African Diaspora. The other for its intelligence and its mastery of the history of occidental  women and its aesthetic sense which has no equal in my eyes.

This creation has not been completed without pain or without soul searching deep within myself.  It is born of very precise symbols between purity, jubilation, heartbreak, and rupture which are all those moments that accompany the happy yet tiresome life of those women who we love so much…  this flagrant reminder about “Aferkiw” is intended to demonstrate what is around certain limbs and joints of the body that are absent from our field of vision.

We see this in certain periods in the history of Greek classicism with “Venus de Milo”, at the ancient vestiges of the world, while crossing through the harsh period of slavery with its condemnations…

The legs, intended to be the link between the brain and the “brawn” of the arms, evoke for us their difficulty to move forward in their actions, their activism, and take positions which are often reckless and misunderstood  (mobility and immobility) entering our selfish system of men and retaining the tribal soul despite our contemporary evolution, division into castes, dogmas, politics, and visceral religions to name just a few…  Using equality, parity, and other careless ploys at their whim.

Thus the construction and the shaping of her body in all these particular materials.  Reflecting the compression, the pain, the embalming, the perversity we evoke the need to breathe and the need for affirmation without any form of “submission or protection”.

(Homage to Anastasia, Venus Hottentot, and all you all-powerful rebels proud of your souls.)

This body, scarred by an exceptional life-experience, combat of all kinds, and innumerable experiences, healed of all the sadness of the world as a parent, womb, protector, never hesitating to comfort us in our weaknesses and sufferings…

Thus the reutilization of the sanctuary and the human cemetery inside her in order to show that even in the darkness they carry our flesh!

Accumulations of elements of a sacrificial, evil character that have come from far away and which in a voodoo procession become dynamic, confused, delighted, piercing, and are brought together in an original symbiosis.

“bandage, shield, wedge, chain, excise, sacrifice, strangle, scarify, stab, deceive” these are the results of the assaults and attacks on women’s shells and dignity, made of flesh and whose ravaged side won’t praise the spiritual misery of the world of yesterday and today.

(heroic women – desire and inner reflection)

A homage to all the women of the world whom I respect as mother and creator of a better world… 

Shuck One.   

    Materials used: acrylics, aerosols, clay, gauze strips, wall tape, wood, cardboard, rubber, rifle barrel, iron chains, cement, wax, crystal, rusty nails, copper, iron fencing, expanding foam, diverse papers, animal skins, precious stones, old photographs, feathers, gold dust, diverse resins, thinned and darkened varnish, screws, etc.