Prune Nourry holds a degree in wood sculpture awarded by the Boulle school in Paris in 2005. Currently living in New York, the young artist keeps captivating the Contemporary Art world with her ambitious and unpredictable projects. From the Holy Daughters – hybrid sculptures half-girl, half-cow, exhibited in 2010 in the streets of New Delhi – to the Dîners procréatifs which address the topic of children “à la carte”, she uses every medium to implement her anthropological as well as aesthetic approach. Through sculptures, installations, performances, photographs and videos, the young artist conveys her thoughts on bioethics, genetic manipulation, and gender selection.
In the continuity of her projects Holy Daughters and Dîners procréatifs, Prune Nourry creates Terracotta Daughters: a group of terracotta sculptures portraying 12 years-old girls. The artist quotes directly the emperor Qin Shi Huang’s terracotta army in Xi’an, China, which dates back to the 3rd century b. c. Discovered in 1974, this extraordinary funerary complex of ca. 50 km2 shelters an army of warriors buried to escort the emperor’s tomb 2 200 years ago. The artist borrows and reinterprets a very powerful symbol in order to raise awareness and draw attention to a serious demographic issue in Asia. China particularly suffers from a lack of women due to a population control that leads to selective abortion. In the Chinese society, the preference for sons results from a patriarchal system that proclaims men superiority over women. Unlike his female counterpart, a son offers some important advantages such as perpetuating the lineage, taking care of elderly parents, or providing financial support. Thus, the only-child politics proclaimed in 1979, became the only-son rule. These “missing women”, killed before they were born because of their gender, are symbolized in Prune’s work by an army of 116 girls inspired by emperor Qin’s 8000 soldiers.
Before giving life to her Terracotta Daughters, Prune did a field trip and carried some research. She interviewed Chinese sociologists, and spent a year in a modelling workshop in Lintong, not far from the terracotta warriors’ archaeological site, where she collaborated with local craftsmen specialized in copying the soldiers’ statues. First she sculpts 8 life-size Terracotta Daughters modelled after 8 Chinese orphan girls. Once these original statues completed and molded, Prune gives the craftsmen a table of 108 combinations. Then, based on this document, the artisans use the molds interchangeably to create an army of girls who are different from one another, just like the emperor’s soldiers. The artisan Xian Feng personalizes individually each face to make each Terracotta Daughter unique. Referencing to Chinese culture’s deepest roots through the ancestral technique of terracotta sculpture, Prune’s project also highlights contemporary societal preoccupations.
The army was on show for the first time in Shanghai, and its layout echoed the archaeological site it is inspired from. After various exhibitions in Paris, in Zürich, in New York and in Mexico, the Terracotta Daughters will travel back to China where they will be buried for the next 20 years as a “contemporary archaeological site”.
A few artworks were elaborated on the basis of this project: 8 bronze heads, miniature versions of the original sculptures, bronze statues, bronze sculptures of the molds and lithographs.
