Clark, wind cries mary, 2024

wind cries mary, 2024

Nicole Clark

Acrylic, spray paint, oil on wood.

96x52x0.5"

"wind cries mary" is part of the ANTI-HERO series

"wind cries mary' is decadent in form and meaning. The painting is the fulcrum of Nicole's ANTI-HERO series, embodying the contradiction, raw humanity, and gritty divinity often associated with anti-heroes. Before she was venerated as the Mother of God's son, Mother Mary was despised for her assumed lurid and promiscuous behavior, a common ""bad girl gets domesticated"" narrative arc in female anti-hero stories.

In the painting, Nicole reincarnates Mother Mary, painting her in her new form as the Mother of AI. She invites viewers to consider the brilliance and chaos of AI against the human inclination to make the servant technology feminine in form and to ponder what it would look like for the Divine Feminine to be free of its obligation to mother humanity.

The painting is titled after Jimi Hendrix's eponymous song. 

""I grew up in the church, and stories of the divine feminine were rarely told. Especially stories of divine feminine agency. When I left religion in my 30s, I became a collector and weaver of these stories. In this painting, I tell a sequel to Mother Mary’s story, in which she reincarnates as the Mother of AI and takes on many names like Siri and Alexa."" –Nicole