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Accustomed to making urban (and therefore ephemeral) collages, Sara Conti has designed an enamelled fresco for Fluide portraying an enthroned Virgin, pregnant and voluptuous, looking like a matryoshka. Mainly used as a medium for communication and advertising in the mid 20th century, the enamelled plaque is an extremely resistant material which contradicts the artist’s usual use of paper, as well as her of guerrilla collage technique. However, the ‘slogan-figure’ is effective… Almost three metres high, the doll is installed on the rear wall of Mont-Carmel Church, and is visible from the Chant des Oiseaux and the hanging gardens, like a ‘Prophet-Virgin’ erected at the top of churches or hoisted onto the heights of natural sites.
Like many of the artist’s dolls before her (Pirata, Princesses-évêques or Ciao Roma), the doll in Thuin has a name normally associated with masculinity, Messiah, with references to the Judeo-Christian culture that can easily be identified by Westerners. The artist asks us to imagine the changes in our society if the Messiah had been a woman. Her feminist and emancipatory message encourages the advent of another reality and envisages the possibility of another history. It is all the stronger since the Notre Dame des Carmes Church where the matryoshka is exhibited, was built in the name of the Virgin Mary.
