“Chthulucene is a simple word. It is a compound of two Greek roots (khthôn and kainos) that together name a kind of timeplace for learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying in response-ability on a damaged earth. Kainos means now, a time of beginnings, a time for on-going, for freshness. …Chthonic ones are beings of the earth, both ancient and up-to-the-minute…”
“Staying with the trouble”, Donna Haraway
The 3D models in the Nudes serie are concerned with ideas from feminism and are inspired by Donna Haraway’s essays. The project explores the creation of a new iconography based on artefacts of our culture. The starting point for these models is a collection of sexist words that are normally used to dismiss, belittle or insult women and which are often based on comparisons to animals, such as cats, cows or pigs.
Three-dimensional models of these animals are edited and re-mixed with parts of classical or ancient female sculptures to create new composite images that are then 3D printed. The 3D scans that are used in the process of the formation of these sculptures are retrieved from open-source online databases for 3D models such as Thingiverse and Sketchfab.
The pejorative terms that form the inspiration for the work are used, through linguistic reappropriation, as titles of pride for the individual sculptures.
In this way, The Bitch is formed out of the body of a Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a dog that is combined with an 8th century bust of a female indian deity. The Sheep combines a Roman portrait of Ippolita Sforza with the body of sheep, while The Pussy re-mixes Einar Utzon-Frank’s sculpture of Aphrodite with a cat and The Cow uses Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s bust of a female slave.
The sculptures are 3D printed in sandstone. The combination between a more traditional aesthetic that is associated with the use of this material and the amazing detail that 3D printing technology allows for, gives the statues a familiar authenticity that makes the images even more disturbing. As disturbing as the initial words used as inspiration for the work. Words that are often dismissed as just a matter of speech and thus intended to pass unnoticed in the familiar old game of power, positions, rights and dignity.
