Goddess (2025). Created in a collaboration with Xavier Escala.

Wood, ceramics and brass. 123x132x35 cm (open) 123x45x52 (closed).

Description of the artwork:

This piece continues the series Xavier Escala and Nina Murashkina began in 2018. While Goddess is not a religious artwork, it engages with the symbolism and form of the shrine madonna. It represents the idea of the divine within the human being: a woman who opens up and transforms into the temple of a feminine deity. She is identified as a goddess through symbolic elements such as the lunar crown (linked to the Egyptian goddess Hathor), the depiction of an inner image, and the presence of snakes (referencing the Egyptian goddess Wadjet).

Inside part: Three different female figures within the sculpture represent three different states of female nature: the Warrior or Running with the Wolves, the Temptress or Lilith, and the Immaculate Virgin with moist eyes.

Goddess offers a contemporary tribute to feminine divinity, inviting reflection alongside the medieval shrine madonnas, which hold an essentially masculine Trinity. As you know, some of these sculptures were destroyed, altered, or censored due to theological conflicts. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, certain theologians criticized these figures, arguing that the Virgin’s larger size relative to the Trinity she carried could lead to theological misinterpretations regarding the role of women in Christianity.

In this context, Goddess (2025) is a thoroughly contemporary response by Xavier Escala and Nina Murashkina — it affirms the equal spiritual authority of women and men.