EVA AND THE SNAKE TOWER, 2005

The installation EVA AND THE SNAKE TOWER combines a female nude figure with a sculptural ensemble made of cardboard, plaster, and paper printed with a snakeskin pattern. A 240 cm high tower and smaller, cup-like forms stand in contrast to the naked woman. The title evokes the biblical scene of the Fall of Man, but the snake appears here not as an animal, but as an architecturally frozen monument.

The tower functions as both a phallic symbol and a cultic form: threat, power, and seduction are encapsulated in a single ornament. Eve, however, eludes the role of the lascivious seductress. Her neutral body appears objective, almost documentary—she becomes an observer, not an object.

From an art-theoretical perspective, the work intertwines psychoanalytic and feminist levels: The tower, as a symbol of desire and fear, encounters a female presence that comments on the phallic monument instead of submitting to it. In the tension between body and sign, nature and symbol, a critical revision of myth is revealed: Eve no longer appears as a sinner, but as a distanced witness to cultural projections. Dr. Pelle Solus

Dr. Pelle Solus