MARIAS 1-8, Mixed Media Sonia Wohlfarth Steinert

Commentary to "MARIAS"(selection)

The Holy Maria .. The Many Facetted.
Not one of the interpretations in the light boxes are obvious. Why should they be?
After all this is not about altars, devotional images or turmoil- art. It is an individual artistic approach to seize the various shapes and r^oles of the omnipresent Holy Maria.
The fact that She is needed and wanted in so many locations, makes her image ambiguous.
This complexity that inspires imagination is given maximum expression by SWS in her object boxes, by creating ever new and questionable parts for her Holy Marias, stimulating new emotions and contradictory feelings.
Martin Damus, Prof. for Art History at the University of Osnabrück

... In her creation "Holy Marias Make Money" the artist occupies herself with the global phenomenon of the adoration of the Virgin Mary in the past and at present.
Affect by a childhood in Latin America (Peru) the artist experienced the local folkloric mixture of the cult of the Virgin Mary and the trade with devotional objects.
Sonia Wohlfarth Steinert looked into the different ways to adore the Virgin Mary in various parts of the World. She collected material and devotional objects for the adoration of the Virgin Mary and integrated them into her "object boxes of the Holy Maria". Not only the dissociation of the Holy Maria from her erstwhile Christian context becomes apparent but also the folkloric conditioning and the adaptation of Christian concepts for the most trivial (e.g. industrial and touristy) needs.
André Lindhorst, formerly head of the Arts Hall, Osnabruck