BARBARA BENISH

"Cauldron" was originally installed at Prague Castle, at the Plečnik Gallery, as an echo of the architect's vision of the public space outside. A converted private chapel for Presidents and Kings, it was turned to an art space after 1989. It is surrounded by the beautiful gardens designed by architect Josip Plečnik after WWI, inspired by the Biblical gardens of Paradise. The numerous cauldrons in the garden were the architect's ode to the female elements of containment, nurturing, holding, and water. The cauldron is also traditionally associated with witches and cooks. 

For the exhibition “Melancholia”, at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, the room was adorned with Düreresque wallpaper, recalling the cherub from the artist’s famous print by that name. The floors were covered in moss from the local forests, and the drip of the ice pack into the cauldron remembered time. The installation, titled "Europhobia" after the common grass botanical studies by Dürer, brings the viewer into a natural setting and away from the artificial museum setting. The little cherub from the Melancholia print is reproduced (modeled after my baby daughter at the time), onto "wallpaper" and lines the room. The dripping water into the cauldron acts like a clock, the passage of ice melting records fleeting time, and the mathematical uncertainty, like the rubric cube, of measuring creativity is impossible. Sitting on the mill wheel in Dürer's work (my daughters were raised in an old mill in Bohemia), the cherub brings a certain innocence to the tableau, and my intention was to do the same in the installation. "Europhobia" therefore celebrates the 'ordinary-ness' of the natural world, the possibility of simplicity and innocence within the limits of creativity. That in fact perhaps the door to creativity (Melancholia), is actually less "grind" of the millstone, and more simply, joy (the cherub).