Ophelia

Tate Modern. 2022

Exhibition

· 16th March – 23rd March 2022 ·

Tate Modern. London.

Description of Work & Relation to the theme of ‘Love and Loss’ 

My beloved father recently passed away. He was my stone carving teacher since the age of 13 and a significant influence in my life. I went to the old workshop, almost abandoned, to see what tools I could recover and clean a little. I found one of my first plasters made from a clay model. The passage of time has improved the piece. I have made a copy with paper and salt. I’m displaying it above the moss growing on the marble stored in the workshop from stones never carved.

Ophelia, the tragic character from Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet, is the protagonist of this sculpture. 

She is the fiancée of the tormented Hamlet; she lost her mind when he killed Polonius, his chamberlain and Ophelia’s father. Beautiful Ophelia lost in thought and deeply distressed walks by a lake picking flowers. When she climbs on a branch, it breaks, and she falls into the water drowning. Her tragic end, hits us, as it happens when someone so young dies. In this mode, she becomes an intangible presence, whose image evokes profound sadness and desolation.

Death is a loss, not an abandonment.