Title: Death

Date: 2021

Description: The portrait is inspired by the photograph Self-Portrait with a Skull (1997). It is provocative because Sarah Lucas photographed herself with a skull between her legs. In Neolithic matristic cultures, death turns smoothly into life. In my painting, I focus on this connection. I imagine Sarah as an allegory of the Death Beholder, as Marija Gimbutas called it. In goddess cultures, the awareness of the death-life connection manifested, among other things, in the form of burials: the bodies of the deceased were placed in an embryonic position in womb or egg-shaped graves. They were often decorated with red ochre. Both the shape of the tombs and the clay symbolise the regenerative aspect of the goddess. Sarah’s hands hang limply from her knees. They look a bit like empty rubber gloves. This way of showing them indicates the “inactivity” of death and that it exists beyond “doing.” The painting is a part of my Ph.D. thesis.

Technique, dimension: oil on canvas, 50 × 40 cm

First showing: 2023, Czapski Palace, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw

Ownership: Monika Waraxa