Feminine Topography, 1995

Plaster, acrylic paint – 180 × 525 × 290 mm

Feminine Topography is an expressive plaster sculpture painted in black and green acrylic, depicting a reclining female figure curled into a fetal position. Grotesque and organic in form, the piece draws a lyrical yet unsettling parallel between body and landscape, merging human anatomy with the topography of nature. The figure evokes the shape of a mountain ridge, a shadowed valley, or the pebble-strewn bed of a woodland stream: here, the female body is not merely represented – it is lived, concealed, and overgrown.

The work originates in the artist’s personal experience of inhabiting an anorexic body – an ongoing struggle between control and surrender, between the pursuit of thinness and the inescapable markers of femininity. Despite intense efforts at self-erasure through starvation, exercise, and purging, the artist’s body retained its full hips and feminine curves. The sculpture reflects this paradox: devoid of secondary sex characteristics such as breasts, hair, or genitalia, it nonetheless exudes a deep femininity. Emphasis is placed on the hips and waist, where soft, undulating lines assert their presence with archaic power, resisting all attempts at elimination. This body is not an object but a terrain – an entity curled in survival, blending into its environment like a dark mountain cloaked in forests and streams.

Feminine Topography embodies a stark duality: it radiates both calm, like a sleeping animal, and alarm, like a creature curled in fear. The tension between serenity and anxiety, beauty and distortion, concealment and monumentality animates the work. Despite its modest scale, the figure conveys a monumental presence – echoing the artist’s past distorted self-image, in which even a severely emaciated body still appeared excessive and cumbersome.

More than a personal confession, the sculpture offers a sensitive reflection on the social and internalized perceptions of the female body – its malleability and its resistance. Feminine Topography presents a closed yet cosmically resonant universe: a landscape shaped by the body, where fragility becomes a form of strength.