David Bowie's Thumbelina
- Published in Installations
The concept of perceiving new aspects of the form itself - the look, provoked me in its 'same-meaning' incidence to import new (inversely proportional and seemingly paradoxically implanted i.e. inhabited) human element (an asexual childlike figure which symbolically exists autonomously) in the shown work.
César Baldaccini's sculpture "The Thumb" (1976) is made out of bronze, modeled on a live model's thumb, maybe even on author's own finger mold, its form is increased (90x50x42cm) and derived in a new hyper-realistic thumb notion treatment. Mentioned dimension somehow accidentally matches the format of a Chinese cradle, which led me to deeper deliberation about that seemingly unnoticeable congruence. It is the one which was intended for age of the child that symbolically exists in that paradoxically organically shaped habitat increasing what already appears to be a symbolic display of an astronaut who screens the strangeness of the look of one form as familiar as a jumpsuit. Visibly evolving type of a symbolized figure, whose enlarged nail as a detail becomes a big eye, that, like a mirror (polished bronze), looks at the environment. With this, it outgrew into the enigmatic modern "apotropeion which takes over everything around itself as a sign of symbolical protection". By bringing in the form of the sarcophagus symbol, the thumb interprets a mummified subject, as such intended for a permanent museum value, where it represents subsistence of "existence of the higher power form", which is used to bring in the polyvalence symbolic relation. First of all, existence of the form which actively anticipates look to a child's face, protected from world on the outside, brings it closer to a status of a sanctified form, and second meaning is spread to a meaning of denied freedom, enforcement, removing from a normal life and freedom of happy childhood.
In the foundation of this piece's possible meanings it is discovered a carefully thought-out cause of modern forms of mystifying the subject, common appearances and information about various events in our everyday lives, music, fashion and art itself.
Hence, the shown virtual sculptural installation "David Bowie's Thumbelina" should primarily be observed as a synergy of latent dynamism of the symbols applicable to jeopardized children theme, an iconic global auto-thematization plane, as well as a historical fashion culture metaphor which is taking more and more part in growing up of our youngest.
By using conditional branding metaphor of the work itself by virtue of Bowie's popular musical achievement "China girl", in context of deeper meaning (semantic) of overviewing, doors are opened to a wider human analyses of this form dedicated to recognition of an unfamiliar but at the same time the most cruel act of sacrifice which is taking part simultaneously with our everyday lives. Namely, if we know that the most endangered child of the world is newborn or maybe even not yet born Chinese girl, then the acceptance of such iconic notion is almost imposed. By its materiality and surface use of parts of gold it suggests and sends out impressions of hieratic interpretation of godlike with nearly always modern realization of Cesar's thumb, which is used here to confirm and identify the unsigned, and the dedication to that horrible act.
Starting with my own non-acceptance of alternative solutions in art itself I resorted to a sculpture - installation virtual form because it is more than clear in what kind of material situation was our culture, especially when we speak of the statuary domain and art achievements, in the period of more than twenty years ago, from which this work originates (1994).