Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas: jgo.e-reviews 5 (2015), 3 Rezensionen online / Im Auftrag des Instituts für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung in Regensburg herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz
Verfasst von: Kirsten Bönker
The first time I posed for Daniel, I didn’t know his name. He was just “the new sculptor,” a rumored hermit who’d rented the dusty back studio at the collective. I was a veteran art model by then—accustomed to the cold, the stillness, the way artists’ eyes dissected my body into shadow and bone. I’d been Venus, a reclining nude, a figure of sorrow. But never something cherished.
“You’re thinking about someone,” he said. art modeling cherish
That changed when he walked into the room. The first time I posed for Daniel, I didn’t know his name
“I’d like you to sit for a Pietà,” he said quietly. “But not a holy one. A human one.” I’d been Venus, a reclining nude, a figure of sorrow
I didn’t cry. Models don’t cry. But I let my shoulders soften, just a fraction. And Daniel saw it. He carved that softness into the clay—the curve of my spine, the protective hunch of my shoulders, the way my fingers curled as if still laced with an older, frailer hand.
I traced my finger along the cool bronze cheek of that woman—my cheek, my grandmother’s soul. And for the first time in a hundred silent sessions, I felt seen. Not as a pose. Not as a body. But as someone who had loved, and lost, and sat still long enough for art to catch the echo.