"Center Street Pieta"

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on March 28, 2016 at 2:15pm

Curator’s Comments:  

 

Center Street Pieta is an ironic, self-aware image.  Constructed with what looks to be a combination of found sculptural and painted elements, the completed piece enjoys a sardonic rift on Western culture’s claim on religious Christian iconography.  Exerting a decidedly more urban and contemporary framework for the Virgin and the dead Christ, the piece still asserts the dominance of the mother figure as larger than life.  Horizontally positioned, the viewer could see an attempt at profane humor in the physical turning of the orientation of the picture to communicate death.  I also find it amusing that the wooden scaffold/easel functions both as true cross, and as frame for floral embellishment.  The inclusion of the flowers recalls  road side homages to fallen victims; impromptu displays of grief and the beginning of an ex-voto shrine.  The saturated pink color of the wall, and Frida Kahlo’s highly recognizable portrait injects Mexican or Latin American identity into the scene. While her arms don’t actually cradle her dead child, the extension of her shoulders into the crossed arm of Jesus connects them visually and culturally.  It’s a smart piece, and I do hope you post more work on the site.