Work in progress

"'With this gesture of nakedness, I incarnate the apparition of the Virgin with my woman’s body, living and in the flesh. Why shouldn’t it be a miracle that today a woman can decide to take the freedom to make this gesture, knowing that in some countries the same gesture could still cost her life?' Deborah De Robertis calls her performance in Lourdes The Origin of Life, in reference to Courbet’s painting, and references the Gospel of Saint Luke, 11:27: 'Blessed is the belly that carried you. Blessed is the sex that birthed you. Blessed is the breast that nourished you'.

'In the monotheistic religions, Mary is the female model that is most represented, the most known and therefore the most exploited', de Robertis explains. 'The figure of Mary in Lourdes is in the end just as exploited as the face of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. It is the goose that lays the golden eggs, it drives the economy of the Marian city. Like the Mona Lisa, her head can be found on mugs, t-shirts and keyrings. Like the female genitalia of the Origin of the World, which attracts tourists and fills the coffers of the Musée d’Orsay, the representation of Mary attracts pilgrims from all over the world', she says.

'But what would happen if the power relations were reversed, if the statue of the Virgin was incarnated as a real woman to regain ownership of her body?' asks de Robertis. 'What would happen if the woman whose vulva was painted by Courbet embodied herself to get out of the frame and use the institution to her advantage and not the other way around? By embodying the female models my aim is to free them from the framework in which they are frozen and thus to reverse the point of view on the historical, political and artistic level'".