Venus Incarnis
The Vision of "Re-membering Eden" in "Venus Incarnis"
"Venus Incarnis: Seeds of Material Divinity" - Installation with clay figurine, seedbed and illuminated text
"Venus Incarnis: Seeds of Material Divinity"
The multimedia work "Venus Incarnis: Seeds of Material Divinity" is an artistic proposition that functions as a physical, embodied manifestation of the symbolic cosmology "Re-membering Myths", presented theopoietically in the essay "Re-membering Eden". The work uses the primordial figure of the Willendorf Venus and the Catalan tradition of the Caganer to challenge contemporary taboos around the body and to explore our relationship with nature, technology, and the notion of sacred materiality.
Artwork Details
It is a subversive form of contemporary ecological activism centered on an appropriation of the Willendorf Venus—an earthen figurine dating 30,000 years back and often interpreted as a fertility goddess—presented crouched, in the posture of a Caganer, the defecating figure traditionally placed slightly aside from the nativity scene in Catalonia at Christmas to bring good luck and harvest. Like the original Venus, this figure is full-bodied—prominent belly, buttocks, and breasts—highlighting the creative power of the female body. The addition of excrement behind her and a baby in front aims at accepting our wholeness. Although the posture remains the same, the frontal view of the excrement confronts us with our biases toward bodily functions, while the frontal view of the baby restores her as a goddess of fertility.
Technical Details
Work Composition
I call it a composite work as it consists of an installation and a pilot action. The installation's structural elements are a wall-mounted wooden light box (40×39×10 cm) joined with a wooden seedbed (10×39×36 cm), total dimensions: 53×36×36 cm.
The light box (40×39×10 cm) hosts a handwritten text in English about the Venus Incarnis (incarnate), placing her within the tradition of sacred iconography.
Seedbed
The horizontal seedbed (10×36×33 cm) contains a substrate of soil and grass, activated seeds, and at the center the clay statuette of Venus Incarnis (22×13×14 cm) in profile. In front lies a clay baby and behind clay excrement. The seeds will sprout during the exhibition.
Illuminated text
What if the sacred was never transcendent, but part of the matter we've learned to fear?
Venus Incarnis brings our goddess back to earth - not as punishment, but as a return home. In clay and seed, through change and growth, divinity arises from descending into life, not rising above it.
The force of order works quietly, like fungi threading through decay, creating beauty and complexity from breakdown. It's not all-powerful, but it's present - weaving new life from chaos's edges.
This Venus doesn't flee the garden in shame. She plants it.
Her gifts turn to soil. Her body returns to earth. Her sprouting seeds remind us: breakdown isn't the end of the sacred - it's how the sacred renews itself.
The divine whispers not only from the sky, but also from the soil under our feet. It doesn't stop our pain, but helps us find meaning in it -to love what grows from loss.
In Kythira, where Aphrodite emerged, we recall: Love embraces all life's cycles -even the embarrassing ones.
'We left the Garden not because we were punished, but because we were ashamed to be seen. Now we return, knowing we were always loved.'
—From "Re-membering Eden"
Key Objectives of the Work
To challenge social taboos around biological functions such as motherhood and defecation.
To provoke reflection on how digital realities affect our reconciliation with the body.
To act as a "subversive form of contemporary ecological activism."
To extend its action beyond the gallery through a participatory, geo-located artwork.
Technology and Re-embodiment
Paradoxically, the work employs digital technology (the "Venus Map") to facilitate re-embodiment with the natural world. This suggests a nuanced view: technology is not inherently alienating; it can be a tool for "re-membering," bridging the "hidden" (bodily taboos, shame) with the "digital" (the search for connection) through embodied, ecological action.