Skyld, skyld, Fadervor

In this work, I portray my grandmother’s face. She is seen dressed in a nun-like outfit in the symbol of the Virgin Mary. The sacred heart fills the middle with a certain mythology about it, as small eyes hide behind the thorns. A lamb’s head hangs from her, as a reference to hedonism.

I work with both the balancing of hedonism and orthodox Christianity against each other, just as I question the figure of the Virgin Mary. She actually weighs down as a result of the lamb’s head towards the bottom, but in the sides you can see the doves of the Holy Spirit flying upwards. In addition, the praying hands also turn up. For me, it is a representation of the absurdity I find in religion – how things turn upside down.

It is interesting for me to work with the female line in my family, because I cannot avoid that it plays a big role. Behind my grandmother hides in Russian the text “Guilt ! Guilt” followed by the text of the Lord’s Prayer. It refers back to the work “My core of guilt”. As a child, I said the Lord’s Prayer before going to sleep every night and when I asked for God’s help. Although that has changed and I no longer wear the crucifix I still seem to find help in my prayer when I’m in despair. Just as the cross with its intersecting horizontal and vertical lines, a symbol of the meeting of the heavenly and the earthly at the place where Jesus hung and died, the upward and downward lines in the picture are the same symbol for me.

Hedonism is about the highest good and that man ultimately only acts to achieve pleasure. I see these traits repeated in my Orthodox relationships. How, in spite of Christ’s words, they turn their lives towards the good. The lamb represents Christ, as both suffering and triumphant. I am trying to challenge the idea that we sacrifice the lamb, i.e. Christ for our own pleasure and thus commit the sin.