2007
Hand-printed lithograph
105 x 68cm
Edition of 15

This print relates to a sculpture that Claudette Schreuders conceived in 2004 and exhibited at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York as part of Personal Affects: Power and poetics in contemporary South African art (illustrated in Personal Affects, vol 2, pp 66-7). In her solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, in February 2007, this figure was incorporated into a new series of works titled The Fall that brought the story of the Garden of Eden into our time.

In this installation The Free Girl functioned as the central figure in a trinity. On one side stood The Bystander and on the other The Virgin. Schreuders envisaged these three sculptures as a still and reflective counterpoint to other figures that were actively caught up in the narrative.

The Free Girl stands upright with a blank stare, her expression suspended in time as is invariably the case with Schreuders’ figures. A snake curls around her shoulders, its tongue flickering near her left breast; she stands with her right foot on another snake. The concept behind the work draws on two diverse sources that nonetheless share similar aspects: the traditional African Mami Wata figure, in which the goddess embraces a snake as part of her power, and the Catholic figure of Mary with a snake that is symbolic of original sin. Schreuders has integrated elements of these different female figures in her sculpture which allows her goddess to be ‘free’ in the sense that she does not belong to any one religion or belief. Yet, there is irony in the fact that her freedom does not leave her untroubled. She is burdened by two snakes, one that she has killed and one that threatens to invade her, and she must make her own moral decisions between these two contradictory positions.

Schreuders exhibited her print series The Long Day, based on a series of sculptures produced in 2003/4, at Michael Stevenson in May 2007. It has become an established part of her practice to translate her sculptural figures into prints – a method that began as a means of recording and revisiting the sculptures, but which also allows these very singular figures a different type of freedom in the world.

© 2007 Michael Stevenson. All rights reserved.