Soasig chamaillard biography examples

Super Marie

I begin this blog here, with the decision to feature artists that have similar themes to my own: that of spirituality, religious iconography, ritualism and popular culture.

A month ago, I came across Soasig Chamaillard’s Super Marie and was struck by the magnificent revisioning of the Virgin Mary as superhero and it made me think of that icon’s interesting history within the context of African spiritualism — a topic that I explore in my own driving range. 

Judith Gleason, for instance, has a great book called Oya: In Praise of an African Goddess, in which one is able to see how religious icons connect to a variety of traditional myths and popular culture. Oya, the goddess of change, independent women and hurricanes, in the West has been transformed into a powerful female comic book figure; moreover, throughout Gleason’s book, similarities in reverence (eg., runjembe beads to Catholic rosary) are highly noted. So it’s interesting looking at Chamaillard’s work and all the different features she resurrects in religion’s most popular female figure.

For all intents and purposes, Chamaillard is perhaps the best choice. I conducted an interview with her over the month of February this year to discuss her sculptures, iconography and the development of her work. I have reproduced this interview in English. I’d like to thank Soasig for taking the time to participate in this discussion and Sandra Haar for her assistance from the onset.

Saint Barbie

KAREN MIRANDA AUGUSTINE: Soasig, first, tell me a little about yourself.

SOASIG CHAMAILLARD: I’m 31 years old, I’m French and I live in Nantes. I did my studies at the fine arts between 1996 and 2000.

KMA: I read that you first worked in illustration and design. That I found interesting because designers work so much with icons and symbols that connect with t

While Fritsch’s starting point—the reproduced and ultimately reproducible Virgin statuette—is strikingly similar to Montgomery’s use of found figures, the approach to its subversion is dramatically different, reducing the Virgin to pure form and surface, rather than enhancing and/or augmenting it with crystal (itself understood to be a heavenly material in the case of the medieval imaginary, but also to be intimately and immediately of the earth). In both cases, however, despite the difference of approach and choice of material, the effect is markedly alike. For both, the treatment of the original divorces the figure from its immediate and automatic religiosity (unlike, for example, the Katharinenthal Visitation group, where the crystal insertions deliberately heighten their ability to communicate the sacred to their viewer, revealing the Divine to the eye through the magnifying, amplifying matter of the rock crystal). That said, the undoing of the “automatic” or enmeshed sacred in these versions of Virgins—either via applied pigment, shifting scale, or the forced shattering of the figure which literally defaces the form to replace it with the crystalline geode, is always in conversation with the original (via an interwoven and significant mesh of meaning, figure, type, and trope). Indeed, both Montgomery’s and Fritsch’s Virgin variants underscore the complex waves of knowing and unknowing through material and form found in medieval objects— where the Divine is (imperfectly) revealed through the human, the earthly, and the material, either in their perpetuation of this type of epistemology, or their refutation of it. However, despite these correlations, it is notable that while the material resonances of the geodes of Montgomery’s works could be argued to deliberately enhance the mystical knowledge presented through the form, again echoing the material

Since the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church has celebrated May, a time of new growth, as “Mary’s month.” The calendrical placement of this celebration probably has to do in part with the fact that the ancient Greeks celebrated a festival to Artemis, the goddess of fecundity, in May; the ancient Romans, Flora, the goddess of flowers and spring. Because Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit, conceived in her womb and brought to birth the life of the world, Jesus Christ, Christians see her as standing at the threshold of an eternal springtime.

[Related posts: “‘May is Mary’s month’: Hopkins poem meets Glasgow style”; “Bursting with God-News (Artful Devotion)”]

POLL QUESTION: Before moving on to the six roundup items below, if you are a regular reader of this blog or other media like it, would you please help me out by answering the following poll question? (I’m trying out this WordPress feature for the first time!) Over the years I’ve gathered a lot of compelling poems and artworks on the Annunciation, encompassing a variety of eras, styles, and perspectives, and I’d like to pursue the idea of turning one or the other, or both, into a book. Which kind of Annunciation-themed book would you be most inclined to buy? Keep in mind that a book with art would cost significantly more because it would be in full color and probably a larger hardcover. Also note that a book that combines art and poetry would obviously have fewer selections of each than a book dedicated fully to one or the other.

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UPCYCLED MARY STATUETTES:Soasig Chamaillard is a French artist who, since 2006, has been acquiring small, damaged statues of the Virgin Mary—either from garage sales or received donations—and restoring and transforming them, often with reference to children’s toy lines and media franchises, comic book heroes, or other pop-culture icons. Some are silly or irreverent; others, merely quirky. Here are two I like, which both modernize Mary

On the occasion of the release of the new collaboration between Artoyz Originals, we spoke at length with the artist to discuss her art, her desires and of course this new Super Mary OH figurine! which will be released on 06/01/2023 at 6:00 p.m.

How do you become a Toy designer and what is your background?

First, I don't consider myself a Toy designer, I consider myself more of a visual artist because I don't limit myself to one type of creationIn my career, I started by wanting to be a singer, then a stylist, then a children's designer, then a toy designer, then doing stop motion animation in short, I really wanted to do a lot of stuff.Visual artist is good for me because it allows me to experiment a lot of things.

So I find myself with that and during m