Stories from a Good Death (2022)
The works in Stories from a Good Death allude to events experienced by the artist in Sicily in the days prior to her month-long residency at C.R.E.T.A Rome. Bearing intimate witness to a death, the artist conceptualizes the true event with references to the visual lexicon of funerary, scientific, and religious statuary that includes Bernini's allegorical works, the anatomical wax 'theaters' of the Sicilian sculptor Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, and the religious statuary of the Li Volsi in Tusa, Sicily, the artist's second home. These works at once memorialize an experience and enfold ideas of transformation, destiny, desire, and mystery. This series is her first experience in figurative sculptural hand-building in terracotta, demonstrating her success at branching into new territory with her work while carrying forward essential threads and visual motifs.
Stories from a Good Death consists of two pairs of life-sized arms hand-built in terracotta which hold white porcelain objects. The first pair, Stories from a Good Death (i): The Legend of Agnieszka and the Good Death, features an Apollo Parnassius butterfly resting on the back of one hand while the other hand offers a lily. The second pair, Stories from a Good Death (ii): Talisman for the Joyful Warrior, features a hand grasping a forked stick resembling a slingshot, while the other hand is poised, grasping a pebble. The works have been shown with and without the porcelain objects, depending on the venue and context.