Mother Marge
Comissioned 3D model, 2019
Margaret Thatcher's head on the body of the Virgin Mary. The figure’s hands are held together in prayer, but Thatcher’s dead eyes stare straight ahead.
“Mother Marge” considers archetypes and monumentality. Margaret Thatcher, the archetype of neoliberalism, is rendered as a saint figure. She is the mother of neoliberalism as Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, though the very concept of the mother—a figure that is loving, warm, nurting—is inverted. Both Margaret and Mary are revered, emblematic archetypes of two omnipresent, destructive ideologies. These woman may represent these ideologies, but their power is a facade. Under neoliberalism, which promotes and maintains patriarchal systems, only men can be in charge. Christianity is one of the oldest patriarchal systems in the anthropocene. The physical model evokes one facet of neoliberalism, consumer culture. A model, unlike a sculpture, is able to be reprinted, reproduced, distributed to and consumed by the media and image obsessed public. Magaret Thatcher was all about image ;)
