Beginning in the early 1990s, my work has dealt with the issues of women’s inequality, sublimation, and abuse, both physical and sexual. Early on, I worked on a site-specific outdoor piece of a woman left alone in her shame after a rape, produced out of honey suckle vines. This piece was called Leda. I never understood the myth of Leda and the swan. If she wasn’t interested in Zeus as a god, why would she consent to a swan? I will never see this story as being about anything but rape.
Shortly after this piece, I began my Garment series. These are empty garments mostly inspired by fairytales, but the undercurrent of fairytales, the part that is just below the surface, the part that is sinister and warns of bad things that happen to children (particularly girls) and the things that, if they happen, we should never speak of.
In 1998, I started the first of my Frozen Charlotte drawings, a series inspired by the small, naked porcelain doll of the same name. In the initial series of works on paper, I created an obsessive parade of bruised and bleeding naked, prepubescent girls. Years later, in my series Mercy, four sculpture of naked young girls all mourn for what has been lost, knowing that they – we, me – will never be the same.
When the #MeToo movement broke open, I found that all of these experiences and thoughts of mine were not just mine, they are all of ours. They have a name and an anthem. I needed to make something that documents the scars of the past, hidden and buried, but still existing.
Martha Posner 2018
Shortly after this piece, I began my Garment series. These are empty garments mostly inspired by fairytales, but the undercurrent of fairytales, the part that is just below the surface, the part that is sinister and warns of bad things that happen to children (particularly girls) and the things that, if they happen, we should never speak of.
In 1998, I started the first of my Frozen Charlotte drawings, a series inspired by the small, naked porcelain doll of the same name. In the initial series of works on paper, I created an obsessive parade of bruised and bleeding naked, prepubescent girls. Years later, in my series Mercy, four sculpture of naked young girls all mourn for what has been lost, knowing that they – we, me – will never be the same.
When the #MeToo movement broke open, I found that all of these experiences and thoughts of mine were not just mine, they are all of ours. They have a name and an anthem. I needed to make something that documents the scars of the past, hidden and buried, but still existing.
Martha Posner 2018
PORTFOLIO