Belief

Suzanne Victor returns to her previous exploration of stained glass as a sculptural material in Belief, (2017).  Having first used the material in a 1996 work, Victor wanted to revisit this technique to investigate stained glass’ historical links with Christian iconography in invoking the Divine. The inherent violence involved in smashing stained glass and pulverising it into a coating for sculptures subverts the function of stained-glass windows to direct the gaze and thoughts of the faithful towards the heavens. Instead, it becomes an invitation to view faith and tradition from a different point of view.  

In this work, Victor presents a glass-encrusted sculpture of the human heart, with its tangled network of arteries and valves. The materiality of the crushed glass evokes the human heart’s strength but also its fragility. Although its form might be similar to a specimen found in a laboratory, Victor’s jewel-toned sculpture also suggests that the human heart sees things beyond what science and rational thought might reveal.