Lara Schnitger

Lara Schnitger constructs her sculptures with poles and various types of fabric, as with a tent. They are humorous male and female figures which, because of their attitudes and the cloth used, remind us of stereotypical role patterns and behaviour. With a smile we see through the brutal eroticism of these textile men and women and their bluffing brand of toughness, yet they do not put us completely at our ease. They express just a little too many ordinary human shortcomings and desires, clothed in lace or tweed yet at the same time naked.

According to Lara Schnitger, we have entered the Age of the Woman and a sculpture representing ‘Female Power’ goes with this. For this reason, she constructed for Sonsbeek 2008 a five metre high figure of a woman that unites in itself everything that men project onto women and women onto themselves: the super-feminine woman, the mother, the lover, the hard-hearted mistress, the Amazon, the feminist, the innocent young girl, the whore, the business woman, and so on. This Miss Universe, as Schnitger calls her, has a solar panel as her head. The electricity generated illuminates a lamp at heart height. At night, then, she will be a light in the darkness. This Miss Universe is no longer waiting for the enchanted Prince, which is why it says on her sash: “This Princess saves herself. Long live the frogs.” Visitors walking into the park through and under her legs see themselves in a mirror.

Miss Universe was borne in the Procession by the Guild of Sonsbeek Women, a group of businesswomen.