Before She becomes an icon, She is someone’s child. Before She carries the world, She carries her own love
From 6–8 March artist Anna Kiparis presents Every Madonna Was Once a Child, a solo exhibition at Arc Space and conceptual prelude to her major site-specific commission for Emmanuel Church West Hampstead. While the full commission will inhabit the church throughout Lent, this exhibition offers a first encounter with the work.
The project crosses the threshold between the divine and the domestic, reframing the Fourteen Stations, traditionally a meditation on suffering, through the lens of contemporary motherhood, displacement and the “sacred weight” of the everyday.
At the heart of the exhibition are the Young Madonnas — seven Italian glass figurines from the 1970s, mass-produced and sentimental, originally titled Teddy and Me. These found objects capture a moment of radical innocence, when caring is still a game, yet within that play the echoes of future love already sound. The process of repainting them hallows what was latent all along; Kiparis imagines it as an act of re-consecration, a rehearsal for the sacred labor of love to come.
Drawing on her background in architecture, Anna Kiparis investigates human-made interiors with a particular focus on sacred spaces.
Anna is currently developing her own medium, bringing together three principal strands of ecclesiastical art: painting, sculpture and stained glass. Over several years, she has also initiated author-led collaborations with artists, writers and cultural practitioners, revealing hidden zones of interaction between different artistic disciplines. Her previous projects include A Time to Gather Stones at The Crypt Gallery, London and Play Against War at Rudolf Steiner House, London.
Her current commission for Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead, extends this enquiry through the Fourteen Stations of the Cross as experienced by a contemporary congregation. The project is developed in collaboration with the Reverend Dr Catriona Laing of the Church of England.
Curator: Il Gurn
Website: https://stationsoflife.co.uk
Every Madonna Was Once a Child opens March 6 @6pm, Arc Space, 13 Tottenham Mews, 2nd Floor, London W1T 4AQ.
On view until 8 March.
The site-specific commission for Emmanuel Church West Hampstead will be on view throughout Lent.
