Thanks to French artist Soasig Chamaillard, the Holy Mother has more looks than Madonna.
Holy Mary, mother of invention: these re-created statuettes turn the Blessed Virgin into an imagination of what women can be, feel, and represent.
"In 2005, my father gave me a statuette he found in a secondhand shop," Soasig Chamaillard, the loving guardian and creator of these multifdimensional Marys, tells Creators. "Part of her foot and her pedestal were broken. I liked this object very much but I didn't want to display it in my house. I found it was too difficult to face her every day. I feared she was reminding me that I would never be a perfect woman."
Jeans Marie, 2015
Chamaillard put the Mary statuette in her studio and says "we observed each other for a year." Eventually, the fear subsided and she decided to reconstruct poor Mary's foot and pedestal. In doing so, something magical happened: "I gave something of myself to her." The artist realized she and Mary could work together, and she immediately reclothed her in something more interesting.
"I understood quickly that this work could last a long time, to achieve its full form and not fall into cliche," Chamaillard says. While you and I might see these Mary transformations as something cute, even kitschy, for the artist it's an examination of womanhood, of spirituality, of customs and habits (pun intended).
The reaction is mostly positive, but now and then she encounters enraged Catholics. Once, a show was canceled under pressure from religious groups. Then, on the other hand, a convent once sold her a lot of statuettes with the full knowledge of what they were for. "It's not a problem of beliefs, but of openness of spirit," Chamaillard says.
More, plus pics:
https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/the-virgin-mary-now-with-800-more-tentaclesI look at these and I can't be offended or consider them wrong or inappropriate. Maybe it's because the artist has no intention to shock or offend.
