Weeping Women

Monash University Museum of Art’s 2014 Ian Potter Sculpture Court commission.

(…excerpt from catalogue) “The Weeping Women make up a group of public sculptures that are deeply informed by the artist’s feminist perspective. They engage in a dialogue with the history of modern art and make a concerted effort to subvert the forms, materials and techniques that are typically associated with canonical male artists’ works. In Weeping Women, the female body is extolled as a life-giving force: alternately adopting birthing postures and referencing the Aztec goddess of purification Tlazolteotl or Ixcuina. Rather than being portrayed as a “tortured” muse, as Dora Maar was in Picasso’s renowned Weeping Woman of 1937, the female in Mestrom’s work is figured as self-possessed and nurturing. Not only does she lactate, with breasts as fountains, her soft curved forms invite passers-by to gather around her – to sit and lay on her body. Mestrom’s sculptures are intended to arrest viewers, even cause them to double-take, precisely because they deviate from the male-dominated history of public sculptures.”

MUMA Project overview
MUMA Catalogue
Landscape Architects Australia Review Feb 2016
Blackmail Offline Visual Essay with images by Sean Fennesy

Mestrom_4Mestrom_3Mestrom_1Mestrom_2_v2IMG_2350b   14-10_MUMA_Mestrom_12 Sanne MestromLOW1470_v2 Sanne MestromLOW1466_v2 Mestrom_6 Mestrom_5_v2

 

All black and white photography by Sean Fennesy