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The public space is one of Michael Dans’ favourite areas. For this year’s Fluide, he has made a polychrome wood sculpture of the Virgin Mary. Human-sized and in the traditional style of Marian icons, this kneeling Virgin, with one hand outstretched and the other on her heart, in an exhausted and imploring attitude, asks passers-by for alms. Installed in the small restored chapel in the Passage Saint-Roch, the sculpture is disturbing. Portraying the most famous woman in our history, the sculpture, in this position, questions our relationship with death, solitude, grief and causes a world to surface where the Church has changed face and can no longer save us. With this installation, Michael Dans turns an object of worship and a universal symbol into a situation of everyday life (begging in towns). He questions everyone’s roles, mixes styles and eras, confuses first and second degrees, turns art codes upside down and creates unease by modifying the scales. It isn’t an atmosphere that encourages contemplation. The humour is disturbing. And yet it is a healthy and philosophical mockery, aimed at a world that all too often takes itself too seriously.
