Sculpture Rituals

I am imitating an act of sculpting in hard material such as stone. I am 'sculpting' an invisible sculpture, with the use of chisels, hammers, etc. I am chiselling it in the air as if I was doing a kind of mysterious ritual around the sculptor’s stand. However the sounds made by knocking a hammer and chisel refer to the letters of the Morse code and contain an encrypted message.

The starting point for the video-performance was a damaged sculpture entitled The Witch (1895) by Teresa F. Ries (1866-1956), depicting a young woman preparing for the Witches' Sabbath. The subject, captured in an archival photo, looks boldly into the viewer's eyes and cuts her toenails with large scissors. The sculpture has been damaged on several occasions under various circumstances, including at least once deliberately that deprived the figure of the hand with scissors.

This 'amputation' performed on The Witch as a work of art containing a rebellious potential and, as Per Faxneld interprets, emancipatory overtones, became for me the starting point for a series of works exploring how the meaning of damage, of loss, and how the lack of an element can be meaningful. This observation led me to the question how a physical lack, the lost element of the damaged sculpture can be reconstructed with the use of trans-media art. What interpretations does it suggest and what kind of possibilities does it open in the context of contemporary discourses such as minority rights, feminism, and restoring the memory of female artists - especially sculptors, who gained acceptance much later as professional artists rather than painters.

The hand of The Witch by Teresa F. Ries, equipped with a tool, symbolized agency. That is why hands and sculptural tools are significant elements in my performance piece. However, their function has changed - they become a kind of sound communicator.

The work also refers to the shift observed in the field of art that more and more moves from making an object - an artefact towards performativity, gesture and process. I also ask about the relationship between what is visible and what is encoded in a work of art.

The work belongs to the series Lost Element / Reconstruction of the Witch.