Rona Pondick

Since the beginning of her career as an artist Rona Pondick has made her own body the main component of her work. All her sculptures rely upon the idea that our body determines our life but at the same time remains strange to us. It stems from a process of evolution that we understand nothing of, but which binds us irrevocably to nature. Pondick’s sculptures reveal this strange, somewhat frightening bond since she combines parts of her own body with those of animals and plants. She shows that the animal and the vegetable are part of us, but she also demonstrates that man has the ability to think and reflect.

Rona Pondick has made a sculptural work titled Head in Tree for Sonsbeek 2008. The work stands in the small Ronde Vijver [Circular Lake] and, like almost all her sculptures, is made of stainless steel and measures nearly three and a half metres. We see a young tree, still without leaves and with roots like a sort of umbilical cord. Hanging in the tree’s protective crown like a piece of shiny fruit is a cast of Pondick’s head, It is leaning downwards, as though it is a bit too heavy, the gaze turned inward. It is a sculpture that invites you to meditate for a moment, a moment when you are free of your body and the world.

Head in Tree was borne in the Procession by the Guild of the Barking Deer and the Snail.