Marianne Maric

Marianne Maric reinterprets an ordinary gesture—sitting astride a fountain—and turns it into a powerful metaphor for the female body. The gushing water becomes a symbolic fluid. The gesture takes on both erotic and sacred dimensions, evoking rites of fertility, ecstasy, and purification.

By appropriating an element of urban furniture, Marianne Maric also asserts a reclamation of public space by women who are in full possession of their desire and their presence. Her work engages in a dialogue with the tradition of female nudes in the paintings of Ingres or Henner, while inscribing itself within a critical contemporary lineage: that of Cindy Sherman, who interrogates the cultural constructions of femininity, or Sarah Lucas, whose irony disrupts dominant visual codes.

Marianne Maric collaborates with both anonymous women and well-known figures, such as singer Olivia Merilahti or performance artist Lydia Lunch. American critic Jerry Saltz, when reposting an image from the series, remarked with irony: “Technically, there’s nothing to see.” And yet, that is the point: to summon, through the unsaid and the almost-invisible, the narrative force of the female body.