Emissary Cat

A three-metre-high, mythical creature in black bronze spreads a fairytale-like yet, since the abysmal is part of a real myth, slightly disconcerting mood in Iserlohn’s Volksgarten Lethmathe. In fact, the artist Laura Ford was inspired not by a fairytale, but by the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s best-known novel, “The Master and Margarita.” Behemoth, part cat, part human, is indeed the helpmate of the devil himself there, playing all kinds of tricks on the population of Moscow in the first half of the 20th century. In Iserlohn’s Volksgarten, he presents himself with a human body, cat’s feet, and a long tail, but first and foremost with a cat’s neck and head that seem to tilt forward due to their disproportionate weight. This produces a submissive, but at the same time self-contained, inaccessible posture with which the figure introduces himself in a kind of bow to the viewer while it also seems to be up to hidden intensions. It is a motif which the artist has often used in single figures, but also in groups.

The bronze was donated to the City of Iserlohn by the Ulrich Thiele Foundation. In 2015, the artist exhibited at the Villa Wessel in Iserlohn and received the Iserlohn Art Prize in the following year.

www.iserlohn.de