Yulia Mahr, The Quiet Uncertainty of Stone I, 2024

The Quiet Uncertainty of Stone uses classical statuary of women and intersex peoples as a means of enquiry into the monuments we build to our ideas of beauty, and into the process of decay. Paradoxically, as they age and crack, these figures become more and more meaningful and valuable to me, in contrast to the way we are told to perceive our own bodies, where unblemished perfection is the societal ideal of beauty. The fact that these figures, made to be permanent, record the passing of time in their imperfections, give them a special resonance.
Because I wanted to focus on the statues' blemishes and markings, their flesh-like qualities, and make the marble feel like healed skin, each piece was layered with grains of marble pigment that were then scraped back. A tender if imperfect patching up of sorts. Like the marble of the original statues, this patching will crumble further over time, continuing the cycle that was started by the original sculptors centuries ago.

Selected works

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The Quiet Uncertainty of Stone I, 2024

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