Man of Sorrows

As referred to in the Old Testament:

“He is despised and rejected of men, a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53: 3-5

This is a version of the ‘scapegoat’, literally an ‘escaped goat’ from the ancient tradition that when one animal was sacrificed to a deity, another was set free into the wilderness to take the community’s sins with it. The archetype informed the biblical story of Jesus as a figure to take away all sins, which then takes shape with the story of the Resurrection that Easter celebrates in Christian religion. Carolein’s theatrical sculpture captures the image of the reviled man with a gloopy gruesomeness, an almost volcanic being of molten earth covered in platinum drippings.