Hortus Conclusus: Enclosed Garden 2

A female bust, cast from the artist Maria Kulikovska’s own body, is made of epoxy resin — a synthetic, industrial material that preserves every detail with almost jeweller-like precision, while simultaneously evoking a sense of both fragility and resilience.

Embedded within the resin are roses — symbols of love, the body, and the sacred — that appear to grow through the semi-translucent flesh. They transform the sculpture into a contemporary interpretation of the hortus conclusus — the “enclosed garden” from medieval and Renaissance iconography, where the body of Mary (now Kulikovska) becomes at once a temple, a garden, and a site of transformation.

This image of tenderness and innocence is radically reimagined: instead of the idealized Madonna, here we encounter a female body that does not shy away from pain, experience, exile, or motherhood. It is fleshly, impermanent, and yet resilient — rooted in its own growth. The sculpture preserves a personal history within its material form, turning the body not only into an object of contemplation but also into an archive of time, emotion, trauma, and hope.

The transparency of the form echoes the conceptual openness of the artist herself, who repeatedly uses her own body as a gesture, a vessel of memory, and an act of critique. She seems to ask: What does it mean to be a woman in a world where the body is also a territory of war, displacement, motherhood, and resistance?