Flesh-suffering - fury sense
From seeing and feeling

By Ute Wöllmann
Academy Director

Corry Siw Mirski has impressed me from the beginning with her extraordinary powerful and intense urge to create. For years she entirely worked in secret before taking up her art study in my academy. Here, for the first time, she showed her work to the public and found a place for herself and her work outside her solitude.
In her work we find an obsessive representation of faces. It is the direct and unveiled gaze of the faces that is used by Corry Siw Mirski to attract the attention of the viewer. The beautiful faces bear witness of impermanence and decay of youth and beauty.

The artist combines a range of natural materials with silicone and latex, making use of the flexibility of the material, combining it with the plasticity of seeds, barks and twigs. Thus creating relief-like structures and forceful and vivid surfaces, both in her paintings as well as in her sculptures. Just by looking,  the viewer can actually feel the carnal haptic without need of touching. The viewers are drawn into a universe of emotions ranging from attraction to disgust and revulsion form which there is no escape. Her works are challenging statements of an artist not fearing her own vulnerability.

Her paintings, sculptures and exhibits are hung on a wall or displayed in the room facing each other thus enforcing their brutal and raw impact on the viewer. Her work finally however leads the observer to understand the fragility and helplessness of human being in a unique and poetic way. 

Finishing her study at the academy she now presents a powerful and impressive work of art that will find its place in the public.

Ute Wöllmann
Academy Director
(August 2015)

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BEYOND THE MASK

The works of Corry Siw Mirski

By Tina Sauerländer

Her fleshy red brims over with vitality. It is the color of the blood flowing through our veins. The constrictions, stitches and scars in Corry Siw Mirski's work drastically reveal the fragility of the human body. In their alleged brutality, they symbolize the primal fear of the decline of physical well-being and our own existence. The materials used by the artist as well as their stylistic language are soft, organic and natural. They contrast cultural constructions with right angles, corners and edges. Corry Siw Mirski uses straw, seeds, cherry pits or cicada skins, which she incorporates into silicone along with red pigments. A translucent, shiny and skin-like surface results. The natural and perishable materials evoke fertility and vitality as well as decay and death.

The wormlike objects such as Nullierung (Zeroing) (2013), Retorta (2014) or Underdog (2015) resemble mangled, hand and footless bodies. The artist also does not include a skull. With this symbolic beheading, Corry Siw Mirski opposes rationality as the useful driving force of human action and comprehensive explanation for the state of the world. It would never be rationally comprehended in its totality. As humanity just creates less complex, but plausible, logical relationships and thus a controllable, ostensible order to things. The mercy of an incomprehensible and unmanageable power is perceived as frightening. The common (red) thread with which Underdog is laced together, and the rough stitches in other works such Angel or Retorta I keep the fragile, unstable creatures together. They symbolize the restraining forces, behavioral patterns, fears or negative feelings beyond our perception unconsciously directing us that the artist now pulls out of their repression.

The works with faces such as Blick-Dicht (Gaze Proof) (2015) or Heilige Tochter meine I + II (Holy daughter my I + II) (2014), are often based on the same original photograph. For the artist these are not meant to be a specific person. She is not looking for the interior of an individual through their visual appearance, but instead the essence of existence as expressed in the human face. In other photographic images, Corry Siw Mirski takes up the idea of the inseparable bond between face and mask. In Kirsche (Cherry) or Randschicht (Outer Layer), it is the cut out eyes from a silicon face, and in the sculpture Stammbaum (Family Tree) (all 2015), the artist molded a plastic face with hemp hair to a head, so that it simultaneously resembles a mask. The vulnerability and fragility of one's own body and the impermanence of the self tread upon the face of appearance in a special way. As here, vitality and finiteness are most strongly linked with the perception of personal identity. With skull drawings (since 2013) and works like Schädelholz (Wooden Skull), Übergangsgesicht (Transition Face) or Fragiles Gleichgewicht (Fragile Balance) (all 2015) connects the artist faces, masks and skulls together. Through their trinity, the idea of the earthly life's finite nature intensifies into a Vanitas motif. One's own mortality is often perceived in our secular consumer society as the frightening endpoint of our individual existence, and—just like feelings of shame, guilt or jealousy—given negative connotation and expulsed.

For the artist the mask (latin: persona) symbolizes in particular the self-created identity that lies like a veil over actual existence. One person is, according to the original meaning of the word, no more than a role within a community or a character within a play. For Corry Siw Mirski the true access to the essence of existence lies beyond this mask and the rationally detectable, outer world. The artist is in favor of recognizing the inner nature and allowing supposedly negative feelings or fears. Life and death are part of a natural cycle and inextricably intertwined. The thought of one's own mortality could approach the real, human existence. However, for Corry Siw Mirski, the key lies in in the complete abandonment of self-chosen identity and belief in the configurability of individuality. Inspired by the French-Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who speaks of non-selection of one's existence, the individual freedom does not lie in the (conscious) training of one's own identity. Instead it lies in accepting the inner, involuntary and inherent self. Admitting this lack of influence on identity, on (cultural and societal) living conditions or on death as an uncontrollable force could remove the primal fear of one's own existence. Or as the artist says, “I think, only if one is no longer afraid of their own physicality is one capable of enjoying life.”

Corry Siw Mirski’s works seem macabre, violent or threatening at first glance because they symbolize repressed fears. Thereby the artist calls for a change in the perception and evaluation of these supposedly negative emotions in order to integrate them as a normal part of our existence and life. She thinks in the spirit of the ancient philosopher Epictetus, “It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”

For additional context about the deeper philosophical backgrounds of Corry Siw Mirski works, see her Final presentation at the Academy of Fine Art (2015) and the Artist Talk between this author and the artist.