From Golem to Lilith January 2021
Idea, interpretation and process of creation
Formed from clay was Golem, the savior of a Jewish community in Prague, where my mother comes from.
My concern is, to transport a protective figure, a Corona Golem, into current world events, in a time marked by fear and uncertainty, so that it may give strength, hope and confidence.
The Corona crisis reifies the need for change in this world in a predicament.
The times, the dangers and the demands are different today than they were in the Prague of that time, nevertheless, it seems to me that the moment has come to ask again more and more mystically-spiritually for help and salvation. The rediscovery of feeling connected with the rationally inexplicable, the mystical experiences thus….
I try to unite this inevitable transformation, which should also stand for the birth of a new human being, with the protective function of Golem, which one knows rather as a big lump of earth, not necessarily as an aesthetically beautiful being.
As a female artist, working mother, in the current time, which is still characterized by emancipatory movements, I allow myself the artistic freedom to stage the Golem figure, which remains in its protective function, as a female variant.
If the functioning of today’s world, i.e. capitalism, growth, performance and intellect, is read as an imbalance in the balance between the female-male principles, the female Golem version receives a plausible legitimation.
While we are on the subject of emancipation, the design of my character, loosely interpreted, fits well with Lilith, an ancient Babylonian mythological figure who has become a feminist icon in the last fifty years.
The almost angelic apparition, freed like a butterfly from its corset of fear and insecurity, with widened arms and wings, a heart-opening, protective and salvific posture, radiating self-love, confidence and hope. Breathing freely released from the pressure of fear on the chest!
In the case of a body-sized figure made of clay, the material already requires fragmentation in order to be able to fire the clay at all in conventional kilns. A fact that already dictates to me the working material. A beautiful dictate insofar as I find that it fits the modern man, who lives fragmented in different worlds of experience in the digital age.
The eternal striving of all living beings for harmony, to balance imbalances, Ying and Yang
Olivia Kron
