In 2001, Casino Luxembourg and the Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg invited the feminist activist and artist Sanja Iveković to participate in the exhibition “Luxembourg – the Luxembourg people. Consensus and restrained passions”.
Iveković, born in 1949 in Zagreb, then part of Yugoslavia, was a prominent figure of the New Art Practice movement in Yugoslavia in the 1960 and 1970s. In her art, which includes photography, performances, videos, and installations, Iveković explores social issues with an emphasis on female identity, perception, and place in society.
For her installation for the Luxemburg exhibition, Iveković chose to challenge the heroic masculinity depicted in many statues and memorials.
She made a replica of the Gëlle Fra (the Gold Lady) monument in Luxemburg, the Monument of Remembrance, commemorating the victims of the two world wars by depicting a gilded figure of Nike, the Greek mythology goddess of victory.
In Iveković’s version, Nike is visibly pregnant, and the words on the pedestal on which she stands were replaced with a text in English, German, and French, reading –
KITSCH, KULTUR, KAPITAL, KUNST ((Kitsch, culture, capital, art) /
LA RÉSISTANCE, LA JUSTICE, LA LIBERTÉ, L’INDÉPENDENCE (Resistance, justice, liberty, independence) /
WHORE, BITCH, MADONNA, VIRGIN
The installation was named Lady Rosa of Luxembourg, honoring the Marxist philosopher and socialist revolutionist Rosa Luxemburg, who was executed for her ideas and activism during the November Revolution in 1919.
By naming the statue Lady Rosa of Luxembourg, Iveković deconstructs the symbolic, allegoric, and often anonymous representation of women in the context of war that denies the contribution of actual women. Instead, she shed light on real women who influenced history, warfare, and revolutions, as Rosa Luxembourg did. The pregnancy of the figure adds another layer to the humaneness and realism of women and emphasizes the polarized stereotypes of women, especially of the Madonna-whore dichotomy.
At the time of the exhibition, the installation stood in the vicinity of the original Gëlle Fra memorial. Later, it was displayed in other locations, including the MoMA in New York City and the Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg.
Currently, the statue is not on display.
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