Mannequins

“numerous artistic possibilities ”

In 2004, Marja is in the Netherlands for a longer period of time. While walking along the Albert Cuypstraat, gaining new inspiration, she comes across several torsos of mannequins. Struck by the numerous artistic possibilities of this new material, she asks the shop owner if she can buy some 25 of them, some with a head, some of them headless. Once delivered at her home, she initially uses the material itself as a base to work with, applying only oil paint, but soon afterwards starts adding ceramics, tree bark, and/or sea shells. In a later stage she uses mannequins as a mold, filling them up with papier-mâché (a substance made from paper pulp that can be molded when wet and painted when dry) and using the hardened filling as the main material to work with. At an even later stage, the created pieces also receive a background, and some of them a headdress.

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