Jesus on Donkey Legs

In this work, Viruly works onto the ubiquitous form of a saint-like icon. She is interested in how an image can retain its religious power even when reproduced in humbler materials such as cement. By creating her own reproduction, she simultaneously obscures and preserves the saint beneath, dressing it in an aluminium armour. It is this tension between vandalisation and veneration that she is drawn to: the moment where one image collapses so that another, born of her own labour, can emerge. The work also reflects on her Roman Catholic upbringing and how it may have shaped her enduring fascination with spectacle, devotion, and sculptural making. The metal 'pegs' that appear to fracture the sculpture allude to the dowels traditionally used in stone and marble carving, yet here they are transposed onto the mundane material of cast cement, questioning distinctions between the monumental and the ordinary, the ‘authentic’ substance and the fake.