An old pair of blue jeans is glued to a canvas and then wrapped in plaster bandages so that the jeans stand upright. The jeans, painted with acrylic paint and labeled “Make Love not War” and “Peace”, are complemented by beads, chains, buttons and earrings, as if the jeans had come out of Woodstock or the hippie movement.
While working on the sculpture, I had the music of David Dundas’ “Jeans On” in the back of my mind.
An old piece of garden hose, also covered in plaster bandages and painted, was used to create a rainbow snake that seems to have its nest in the jeans. Red feathers give the snake that certain something in its denim nest.
The snake is a powerful symbol in many cultures, e.g. in Aztec mythology as “Quetzalcoatl”, god of the wind, the sky, the earth, as the creator god and symbol of the ocean 1 The Encyclopedia of Religion, (ed.) Eliade, M., (8 Double Volumes = 16 Volumes), 1995, complete and unabridged reprint of the edition from 1993, Simon and Schuster Macmillan, Vol. 2, Macmillan, 1995, pp.152-153; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/.Quetzalcoatl .
The rainbow snake is a central symbol in the mythology of the indigenous peoples of Australia. It appears as a female and male mother or father deity and is significant in the so-called dreamtime. It forms mountains, valleys, waterfalls etc., with a more feminine connotation, masculine as the sun and is responsible for the rainbow that appears 2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenbogenschlange; The Encyclopedia of Religion, (ed.) Eliade, M., (8 Double Volumes = 16 Volumes), 1995, complete and unabridged reprint of the edition from 1993, Simon and Schuster Macmillan, Vol. 2, Macmillan, 1995, pp.205-208 .
What does a pair of jeans that has been taken off or not yet put on have to do with a snake and with the wisdom of the female/male snake?
There is a lot of discussion today about social sex or gender. Often with great aggression, as if everything would collapse if people defined their gender, which perhaps does not match the externally visible gender ogans. But what is taken away from those who are congruent with their physical gender, i.e. who also see this as their social gender? Nothing, see Dagmar Pauli, Die anderen Geschlechter. Non-binarity and completelytrans* normal things, Munich Ch.Beck 2023.
Nothing: Therein lies the wisdom of the snake, because gender is neither dependent on visible genitals, nor is it of interest to anyone else what is in your pants or under your skirt. It is a human being. Period.
2024, 44 cm (length) x 32 cm (width) x 24 cm (height)
