Ahead of the unveiling of Maid Marian Way’s new statue, artist Alicja Biała talks to LeftLion about her creative process, community involvement and why representation of women in public spaces matters.
The council selected you to make the Maid Marian statue that’ll be unveiled in July for Maid Marian Way – could you tell me how you were picked?
It was a closed competition. The council partnered with Backlit and invited six artists, including me, to compete for this opportunity. If we accepted, we sent in our tailored portfolios. Then we received a brief that began with quite a detailed explanation of what the public wants. I submitted three different proposals, they narrowed the artists down to three, and then we had to develop a more concrete proposal, including a budget, technical drawings and samples, to present to the council in person. It was a long process; it took a little over a year.
What was your process for making the statue?
The main aspect I noticed about the brief was that it was incredibly broad; people didn’t necessarily have a single vision of what Maid Marian represents, so I thought of doing something community-based and open-ended so it could have multiple interpretations. It wouldn’t be a realistic statue with a very rigid intention; it would be something that could be filled in with all the desires and attachments mentioned in the brief.
With Backlit, we invited over a hundred local people to workshops who brought different foliage from different plants from Nottingham and around. Some people would bring plants from their gardens, so each one had a personal story. Then, based on those plants, we created wax moulds for a long process called the lost wax technique, in which you pour molten metal into the mould, so each part is cast in bronze and then welded together into one 2.3m tall statue of Maid Marian.
Could you tell me more about your workshops with Backlit?
I put public engagement in my proposal, so we decided to run workshops in the Backlit gallery and created different slots where everyone was welcome. I presented the project to every single group and held three different activities: one with drawing, painting and making cut outs of Maid Marian, another for air-drying clay, and another for creating waxes.
After the workshops, I was left with a large collection, and I took many of the pieces to turn into metal for the sculpture components. The remaining ones are still at Backlit, and on 17 July, we will open an exhibition with all the parts from the workshop. I also recorded a video documentation of every single piece that the people of Nottingham had done during the workshop. It was such a wonderful space, and it’s really fantastic to see so many people sign up to participate.
Was there any particular version of Maid Marian and her folklore that inspired your piece?
I wanted to create a new version! One that was a living statue, not Cate Blanchett or a fox from a Disney movie. I was trying to escape these representations and propose a very different narrative that’s embedded in the spirit, folksiness and storytelling.
The city wanted me to point towards the May Day tradition that is linked with Maid Marian, so I designed an elaborate headpiece for her. She is very much a May Queen.
Statistics show that only 2.7% of statues in the UK are of non-royal women. Is it important to you to represent women in statues?
It is. I did another one two years ago, and we’re unveiling it soon – it was touching on the same thing: we just do not have a representation of women. It’s a global problem; everywhere you go, you don’t see women represented in public spaces or most of the time they’re just going to be nymphs or beauty figures, not people who are appreciated for their achievements or abilities.
I think this is why I didn’t try to make it abstract, because we need a physical representation. Maybe not one-to-one because you can’t make a portrait of a person when you don’t know what they looked like, but I still really wanted to make it clear that the statue is of a woman. I wanted young girls to look at it and think, “This represents me in so many ways.” I completely think it’s so important.
The unveiling of Alicja Biala’s Maid Marian will take place on Friday 17 July. For more information head to Backlit’s website.
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