“Mast Womb” is part of the “Talisman Debris” series, a collection of sculptures by Gueorguieva inspired by her paper collages and constructions, which were presented at outLINE in Amsterdam in 2008 under the curation of Christine van den Bergh. The sculptures and paper collages reflect her ongoing engagement with the structure of painting: the skeletal support or stretcher in relation to the skin or canvas. The sculptures, in her words, are “broken paintings cobbled together into rafts.”
The bits of colored muslin, hand-painted shards of wood glued, wrapped, and tenderly tied together create complex spatial structures that also evoke talismanic objects and voodoo dolls. The sculptures directly relate to Gueorguieva’s current tapestry works. The metal and wood are now eliminated, leaving only the “skin,” which she likens to the sails of a ship. The tapestries move as the viewer approaches them, with the displaced air gently pushing against the surface. In contrast, the sculptures are still and taut.
“Mast Womb” is central to this transformation from the broken painting to the skin or tapestry. Its clear reference to the body, especially the pregnant body, foreshadows the emergence of the female figure as the central image in Gueorguieva’s current Pompeii Gray paintings.