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Start Your JournalMadonna il Invecchiamento
by Marsha Pels
Personal Reflection
From afar, it reads as a modified wheelchair. Functional, familiar, clinical. But then the details begin to speak. The handles are no longer neutral. They end in cast hands, frozen mid gesture, as if the body has been externalized and left behind. The seat is lined with deer hide, something warm, animal, almost tender. And at the center, where the body would rest, there is that pink crystalline form. Fragile, anatomical, unmistakably intimate.
About This Artwork
Madonna il Invecchiamento is part of a series where Marsha Pels revisits the Madonna archetype through the realities of the contemporary female body. The title itself, Italian for aging or worn out, signals a deliberate departure from idealization. The work combines a wheelchair and commode, both drawn directly from the artist’s own medical experience. Following multiple surgeries, including hand, hip replacement, and spinal, Pels began to see these objects not just as tools, but as symbols loaded with meaning. Fragility. Dependence. Invisibility. Rather than discard them, she dismantles and recomposes them. Cast aluminum hands extend where support structures once were, suggesting both assistance and autonomy. The deer hide introduces tactility and warmth, contrasting the cold industrial frame. At the center, cast crystal evokes the pelvis or internal anatomy. Simultaneously delicate and exposed. This hybrid object resists its original function. It no longer serves the body. It speaks about it. And perhaps more importantly, it refuses the quiet expectation that such experiences should remain unseen.
- Artist
- Marsha Pels
- Location
- Online
- Date experienced
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