A Series of Venuses
Sculpture: resin and mixed media 2021
photos: Beto Soto
After being carved out of limestone and living a life with humans, the 'Venus' or 'Woman of Willendorf' stayed in the ground for ~25,000 years before being dug up in current day Austria. They were found amidst fireplace debris of bone and flint.
Though we've unearthed them, part of what makes them powerful is the mystery they will remain buried in. What was their role? Some say they were a fertility icon, others say they were tactile pornography. Others read their expansive curves as the view a person would have looking down upon their own body- a self portrait. We do know that someone rubbed the Venus' limestone body with red ochre- a natural clay earth pigment.
Coloring, coating, dusting, and dipping these figures in old and contemporary materials has been an experiment in gauging closeness and distance with their equally familiar and mysterious form.
These sculpture series were displayed at AND WE WILL SING IN THE TALL GRASS AGAIN: postcolonial futurities at the end of gender, curated by Alan Lunes and Winter Smiley