From mother earth to the ice queen: how goddesses feed art

As a child, the Indian artist Sutapa Biswas had a calendar hanging above her bed with an eight -armed goddess. Throughout the house hung images of goddesses: “The world of goddesses and spirits continued to be part of my life, for spread throughout our house, female deities were visibly present,” she says in an essay about the Hindustani Goddess Kali. It is a wonderful story about what role Kali played in her life and how it can be seen in her artwork, for example Housewives with Steak Knives (1983-1985), on which a woman is depicted as a four-armed Kali: tongue from the mouth, a chopping knife, and a rose in one of the hands.

Biswas is one of the artists who contributed to the art magazine See all this. Goddesses. The recently published song closes a triptych around the theme ‘Pretty Briljant Women in the Arts’ about women in the visual arts. In 2020/2021 they kicked off with a song in which the Belgian curator Catherine de Zegher brought ‘brilliant women’ into the spotlight. It is a nice song in which well -known, but also many unknown names were given a place in seven ‘exhibition halls’ on the basis of themes in the poems of Emily Dickinson. In the second issue (2022/2023), ‘groundbreaking women’ were put in the spotlight on the basis of the elements of earth, water, fire and air. In this third issue, women are discussed in relation to the theme of goddesses.

“Like Goddesses, his female artists have always been ubiquitous, and they will always stay that way,” writes editor -in -chief Nicole Ex in her introduction. Whether that is true or not, what makes this song – just like the earlier two – so attractive, is the combination of well -known and unknown artists. And what makes this song special is the way in which Goddesses are highlighted from every continent and how that look at the goddess works in artworks. For example, Biswas was not the only one who converted Kali into art, but also Samira Abbassy and Arpita Singh gave an interpretation of the goddess in their work.

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Photo Daniel Kukla

Hand

Wonderful is also the contribution of the Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña, who wrote some poems about Mother Earth, Pachama, and also links to her own life: “I saw my enlarged fingerprints today at the immigration service. They seemed to be crossed by Nazcalijnen in my fingers.” The fingertips remind her of being undesirable and Pachama who maintains the love for the country and also keeps the unwanted alive. There are some images that Vicuña made of Pachama.

Whether it is Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility that can also be found frequently at Beyoncé, or the Maori-Goddess of the Night Hine-Nui-Te-Pō, the European Artemis and whether the Arctic goddess of ice is: they are all addressed. The ice queen (Sedna call the Inuit hair) has many different names. The accompanying story is fascinating, and typical of this song: Sedna was taken by her father on a boat to be saved from an unwanted marriage, but her future husband unleashes a hurricane. While Sedna holds herself, her father wants to get rid of her. He cuts her fingers and then her hands. Sedna sinks to the bottom, and whales, seals and walruses arise from her fingers and hands. Sedna becomes the goddess of the ocean, but her hair becomes filthy because she can no longer wash her hair so without hands. She no longer wears the animals to get close to people so that the villages will starve. People apologize, a shaman washes her hair and the animals return. The following also applies to the female artists in this trilogy: there is no more excuse to ignore them.

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