Darker Me

1995

57 x 42 x 50 cm

Patinated bronze, mica, argon and York stone.

Photo credit Stephen Weiss courtesy of Liliane Lijn

The open torso represents the artist’s body as a shell or a receptacle. Lijn wanted to use bronze in a way that had not been tried before: to use this very traditional, opaque and solid material to express transparency and transformation.

‘I wanted to fill the hollow bronze interior with earth, water and light. I used the clear blue light of argon gas and stacked mica on it and I called this first self-portrait Darker Me, a reference to Eros, to the instinctual drives so often suppressed in women.’ Lijn