Mater in armour, 2022, cast stone, steel, birch wood, (photo: Zuzana Jakabová, exhibition: „Acts of bringing to live – Facts of Skepticism, East Slovak Gallery, Košice, 2023)
The hollowed-out fossilised skeleton of a military tactical vest, with its exuberant shapes and inadvertently accentuated sexual features, is the result of a reflection on the analogies between the (seemingly antagonistic) categories of struggle and conflict and motherhood and fertility.
In addition to the protection of offspring, depictions of the prehistoric Venus figure hypothetically represent a demonstration of power. Plump fat reserves and full bodily shapes are intended to provide a guarantee of survival, as is the case with the rich military gear and its protective elements. These are motifs that have been repeatedly intertwined with the theme of war throughout history. Over the course of the conflicts of the 20th century, the figure of the mother was used in propaganda as a metaphor for the country or the homeland and as a symbolically conceived figure (for example, “Mother Russia”) who calls upon the “sons of the land” to fight the enemy. (Radovan Čerevka, 2023)
