Mara Leverkuhn

Mara Leverkuhn

Art not meant to sell or soothe, but piss on normalcy.

Temptation isn’t sex, or gambling, or drugs. Temptation is the neoliberal pact of going to work, having kids and buying for pleasure — thus picking safety of opinions and comfort/glamour of the nest over intellectual integrity.

Because if you have intellectual integrity, and see what this economic system is doing to the world, other nations, and the poor in your town, you simply cannot just bow your head in your cubicle and go home to a wife and kids in a flashy car. You have to connect the two acts: nesting/work and the destruction of the world. And see how your work and ambitions of a nice respectable life are harvested into an effort of destruction and war. And you have to resist it. And accept, either solitude, poverty, or outcasting.

Not having a job. Not trading your dignity too, for comforts. And fitting in. For me this would be a faustian pact. And I never signed it. It was temptation in the most perverse way, i.e. the most subtle way. When nature plays your deep emotions against you and you’re inclined to seek the socially sanctioned company of people despite being fully aware the limitations they’ve got.

The otherwise idyllic landscape of settled life, a picket fence, prosperity, and the natural abundance symbolised in round womanly breasts.. the nesting spirit that places you as a drone alongside others in the matrix… those appeared as THE TEMPTATION to me. With almost biblical connotations. As they are painted in my tableau.

Learn more about Mara's work here