Volcanic vulva and hermaphroditic marble: a reconstruction of Ovid’s Metamorphoses at the Rijksmuseum | Museums

HeyOn three huge screens in a dark room, snakes slide down artist Jules Krieger’s face – covering her eyes, caressing her lips. She is the silent but terrifying snake-headed Medusa, one of the surprises in an exhibition at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum based around Greek and Roman mythology.

Although the exhibition rarely presents works by artists such as Caravaggio, Bernini, Rodin and Branchi, it brings them together with contemporary artists who reinterpret myths in which male gods do everything in their power to get their evil way and the weak are punished. Transgender bodies, bare breasts and even a volcanic vulva appear in artwork inspired by the Roman poet Ovid’s masterpiece, “Metamorphoses.”

Taco Dibbets, general director of the Rex Museum, believes that the 200 myths and legends contained in this ancient epic poem still speak to our turbulent times. “Transformations have inspired artists for more than 2,000 years, and the topic is of great relevance today, when everything is changing,” he says. “Things transform into other forms. People transform into other people. It’s about the power of nature and giving an explanation to our emotions, sadness, and fears. That’s what makes it intensely human.”

The exhibition features plaster models by Auguste Rodin, with figures emerging from raw rock such as the female statue created by Pygmalion in Ovid’s myth, which has come to life. There is a room inspired by Leda and the Swan, in which Zeus “seduces” the Spartan queen by assuming the form of the bird.

It also includes a rare loan from the Louvre Museum. Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century sculpture of the Sleeping Hermaphrodite—which places an ancient Roman statue of a hermaphrodite with male and female sexual organs on a lifelike marble mattress—was inspired by Ovid’s story of a couple’s bodies merging in sexual union.

There are some uncomfortable consequences for women in the tales. Jupiter takes the form of a cloud or shower of gold to impregnate his feminine target. As one illustration acknowledges: “His love is rarely tender – more often coercive and one-sided.”

Contemporary artists, especially women, give another perspective: the bronze statue of Jupiter made in 2009 by South African sculptor Nandiva Mntambo in the form of a bull was cast in a strong female form. The story of Arachne, who challenged the goddess Minerva to a weaving contest and was eventually transformed into a spider, is transformed into a massive bronze spider sculpture created by the late French-American artist Louise Bourgeois.

A room about chaos and creativity featuring the birth of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (Gunpowder Works). It depicts a female body made of earth and water, with what the exhibition describes as “a large vulva-like shape containing burning ashes.”

Fritz Scholten, senior curator of sculpture, says there is a level of modern discomfort with the sexualization of rape in some of Ovid’s stories and the art they inspired. “All of these early stories in Ovid have been reinterpreted by every generation, and our generation looks at them differently,” he says. “We deal with the fact that it is often not very friendly to women.

“At the same time, we say that you have to be precise in your point of view: these were scenes from the imagination, from ancient fairy tales, and they were often symbolic. I’m not saying they’re OK, but they’re there, and they’re part of our culture and part of our history.”

Schulten points to a copy of Leda and the Swan, painted by Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo. “This is a piece of the bedroom,” he said. “You can be fairly certain it’s hanging above a bed in a palace in Italy. Michelangelo’s original went to France and was destroyed by the French queen – she didn’t like it. So it’s a matter of power.”

In celebrating these stories of change and transformation, Dibbets says the exhibition is ultimately about hope. “It gives form to our fears, to the violence that change often brings, but it also gives us the softness and sweetness of that change,” he says. “Everything undergoes transformation but the spirit remains. This is the hope: we have not lost our spirits.”