Fleur van den Berg

I mine

A Female symbol of liberation and selfcontrol of body and mind

This sculpture symbolizes having authority over your own body and mind.
It stands for freedom and the breaking away from entrenched patterns.
The woman plunges downward—a movement of liberation.
Her flowing hair, streaming below her, depicts the freedom she longs for and fights to attain.

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In her life, my life reveals a four-metre-tall female figure struggling to break free from an inverted cross. Borrowed from Christianity, the cross stands for a faith that for centuries relegated women to a subordinate role and erased them from history—a religion that suppressed female sexuality and cloaked it in shame.

The inverted cross—traditionally a sign of Peter’s humility—later gathered associations with rebellion, anti-church sentiment, and even satanism. Here it takes on a new meaning: not a symbol of destruction, but of radical reversal. It embodies a woman reclaiming herself—hurling headlong downward toward liberation. Her hair streams and fans out below her, depicting the freedom she yearns for and fights to attain.

This freedom is not about licentiousness, but about sovereignty over one’s own body and mind, about living without shame for your sexuality or womanhood. The rust evokes a sense of weight and impermanence, of structures that crumble slowly—yet it also points to the earthly, to life itself.

Factsheet

Dimensions
385cm, 247cm, 41cm (Height, Width, Depth)
Weight
70kg
Year
2024
Edition
1
Material
Rust, Others, Mixed Media, Metal
Style
Monumental, Immersive Art, Figurative, Expressionist
Theme
Spirituality, Society, Body
All artworks from Fleur van den Berg
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