The Guardians

The Guardians are a series of 25 small mixed media drawings/paintings on sculpted paper mache, each around 3.5-4 inches tall.

Much of my recent work is concerned with building up elements of safety and protection - not in any practical manner, but rather in a kind of symbolic, almost ritualistic sense. These heads are a crowd of guardian presences, they can hang on the wall, next to doorways, above a bed or a desk, and are part of a long tradition of apotropaic objects. We have always felt an incredible need to protect our spaces from evil and misfortune, however, we are faced with the reality that guaranteeing this safety is impossible. Objects ranging from mezuzahs to mirrors, to fearsome faces, and horseshoes have been used for centuries to ward off evil. I think of this not so much as a religious or magical act, but as an immense need that manifests itself as a symbolic action, when faced with the impossibility of being truly satisfied.

Another element of this project that compelled me, is that it gave me an opportunity to address my ambivalence about faces in my work. I am immensely interested in bodies and faces, however the presence of recognizable features in my own work makes me highly uneasy. It is the literalness of it, the feeling that I can place a word on it that both bothers and excites me. Usually, when I try to create a face, I let the features emerges, and then attempt to obliterate them through either additions to the surface or some kind of scraping away, or both. The face goes through cycles of emergence and erasure, until it hopefully arrives at something. Each of these heads was its own unique battle, usually undergoing many iterations and often failing miserably, until each hopefully found its own being.  

You can view front and side views of each head in the images below.

Each piece is priced at $250, all heads are numbered 1-25, and you can refer to the captions to check availability.

If you are interested in bringing one of these into your home or have any questions please email anyakotler@gmail.com

Each head has a loop on the back and can hang on a nail in the wall. Please note that the material is not water proof, and is not suitable for outdoors or high moisture areas, such as bathrooms.