Amur Leopard – Critically Endangered
Black Rhino – Critically Endangered
Cross River Gorilla – Critically Endangered
Leatherback Turtle – Critically Endangered
South China Tiger – Critically Endangered
Sumatran Elephant – Critically Endangered
Yangtze Finless Porpoise – Critically Endangered
…. the list goes on and on
They are still here, there is still life in them, but we are in danger of losing so much of our beautiful, diverse creation.
It’s our responsibility
(Resin, glow element)
A sculpture of an ill foreigner in front of an otorhinolaryngological (nose-throat-ear) clinic stands in homage of all the hours spent in the clinics, also by me.
It is a stranger. A stranger reminding of all the people ill away from home. Who will fix his broken water tap in this foreign city?
(Glass, Resin, Recycled Water Tap)
A wise woman once said: “To find one’s inner child one needs to recover a child’s ability of trust and wonder.”
Since the beginning of human history people have been searching for something, someone beyond themselves – the Divine – to protect and guide them.
Over thousands of years the Latvian culture has preserved their search, their spiritual and everyday experience in songs and poetry called Dainas.
More than 1.2 million texts and 30,000 melodies of folk songs have been identified. They are still sung in the Latvian Song and Dance Festival that unites approximately 30,000 singers.
The song chosen for the performance tells about trust, letting go and wonder.
The sculpture symbolizes an inner guardian, who is able to protect, guide and nurture one’s inner child.
Canide(dogs, wolves, jackals) were regarded as the guides of souls in several mythological traditions.
(Resin, Teabags, Performance)
And another, smaller guardian
Safe as Houses
… an English saying indicating perfect certainty and safety when in doubt.
How many people in this world are dreaming of safety?
How many are aching for just one good night’s sleep? Numerous people suffer from insomnia which is either stress or trauma induced.
How wonderful it would be to sleep peacefully and in safety just once…
A see-through, almost invisible form of a house creates an illusion of an enclosed place, of safety and protection.
The Methacrylate suggests a dream-like quality of the space. In the middle a transparent, insubstantial figure is sleeping deeply.
Is she dreaming of safety?
Is she protecting herself?
Is someone protecting her?
Or is she just a dream herself?
Methacrylate , plastic , tempera on canvas 20×20 25x30cm
You are invited to come!
When walking through the villages in the Catalonian mountains in summertime one notices airy, see through chains of plastic, strings of beads or little pearls waving in the wind. These “fly curtains” are hanging in the doors of all the small shops- the baker, the butcher, the cheese shop. The vegetable and fruit shop, which sells the owners own produce from the garden and mushrooms gathered in the nearby forest.
How long will they still be there? Will they survive or will they in time give way to big city supermarkets with automatic doors and air-condition?
The transparency and brittleness of the methacrylate suggests their vulnerability, the fragility of their existence. The recycled metal speaks of antiquity and the alabaster tells of the crispiness of the countryside where it was found.
Methacrylate, alabaster, recycled metal (33x23x6cm)
A female figure is gently swaying in the wind. Is she growing upwards from her roots? Or is she held back by them?
Roots are considered the most important thing in my culture. Your country, your history, your house. You are not supposed to leave them. But what about freedom, growth and transformation?
She is wearing the collar of a Presbyterian pastor, which is a tension in itself: Presbyterians were among the first to fight for women’s rights and the right to vote; yet they also gave fundamentalism its name.
The collar of a female pastor could be the sign of change towards openness and transformation.
Women’s ordination is still denied in many countries (or even taken back as in the case of Latvian Lutheran church). Not to mention huge and important denominations such as Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches who do not ordain women at all. The situation in other world religions is mostly not much better.
Ursula Glienecke
wire, chicken wire, wood (2,30m)
searching...meaning 