golden goddess at cartography of care

The Golden Goddess was selected for the exhibition ‘Cartography of Care’ curated by Spilt Milk Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland.

The Golden Goddess sculpture is an amalgamation of abstracted figurative and architectural motifs, exploring my experience as a migrant and a mother. The piece references the plan forms of the Neolithic temples of my homeland, Malta. The circular apse spaces once served as shelters and temple spaces for an early matriarchal society, people who made and worshipped Mother Goddess statues. The spaces are carved into the rock; of a scale and proportion that feels womb-like, entering the temples one feels embedded in the earth.

The Golden Goddess acts a totemic symbol. The piece resembles interconnected circular spaces as well as a silhouette of a woman. Courtyards, rooms and tombs are also wombs, breasts, and vulvas. Intertwining notions of women as life giving vessels, of mothering and the psychological theories of containment. Exploring the migrant-mother experience: the impulse to be embedded in the rock of one’s childhood, and a yearning for community and connectedness. As I made the Golden Goddess I explored the nostalgia I felt for my homeland, and dreamt of the line of mothers that connected me back to the ancient temple matriarchs.

My process involves carving and tearing clay, exposing fault lines, embedding it with the imprints of tools and combining it with raw, rusty metals. The surface has been intentionally cracked in the kiln, symbolic of weathered materials and ageing skin. This alludes to an acceptance of imperfection, unpredictability and change.