Louisa Chircop - Yes/No

Artwork Description:

Yes/No is a deeply personal meditation on my lifelong, often turbulent, relationship with “Our Lady.” Over the years, this connection has shifted between devotion and resistance, intimacy and estrangement. She has become My Lady—at times an extension of myself, at times a distant other—her presence shaping my inner life as both muse and adversary.

The work emerges from my bicultural identity as an Australian–Maltese artist, and as a woman reclaiming and reimagining inherited religious symbols through a surreal, pagan-inflected lens. Mary and I have shared countless hours—real and imagined—in the grotto. Some days, it feels as though we were born there, our bodies themselves becoming grottos, shelters for love, conflict, and transformation.

‘Yes/No’ embodies the shifting personas I see in her: immaculate virgin, matriarch, goddess, bride, mother, vessel, portal, cave. She is mutable, enigmatic, and always capable of subverting expectations. Within the composition, subtle symbolic extensions of her form—a tap, a bowl of withering prickly pear cactus—speak to thirst, truth, and the threads of my Maltese heritage. The tap, gradually revealed, mirrors the mind’s capacity to conceal and disclose truths, holding certainty and doubt in fragile balance.

Mary here is a fluid, surreal form—shrouded, changing, never fixed. Through her, I search for answers, knowing they may dissolve as quickly as they appear. The title Yes/No speaks to this ambiguity: a realm where contradictions coexist, where belief and disbelief converse endlessly.

Like water from a tap, connection can flow freely or be shut off without warning. In this way, Yes/No is both an exploration of my personal mythology and an invitation for viewers to reflect on their own shifting relationships with the symbols, stories, and figures that shape them.

Artist Statement:

Mary and I, we’ve had our ups and downs over the years. So much so, that my lifelong rocky relationship with “Our Lady”, has been the driving force behind my most intimate thoughts about her. My fascination for every aspect of her inner and outer presence runs so deep and wide, she’s become “My Lady”, and our entities have become one, and at times divorced each other.

’Yes/No’ emerges from my psyche as a testament to the enigmatic depths of human experience about my bicultural identity as an Australian Maltese artist and as a woman reclaiming and discovering my sense of self through the reinvention of religion as fantasy, immersing in my pagan world.

Mary and I spent endless days and nights in the grotto together. In fact, it’s like we were born there. Some days, it felt like our bodies became grottos and our friendship unfurled as two grotto girls that developed a love-hate relationship for each other.

A figure of dualities and contradictions, ‘Yes/No’ is defined by the seamless shifting of various personas - from Immaculate Conception, Holy Virgin, matriarchal figure, powerful goddess, bride, loving mother, a vessel, a portal, a cave. Her enigmatic nature is reflected in her propensity to subvert expectations, evident in her ability to morph and reveal symbolic extensions of herself, like a tap and a bowl of withering prickly pear cactus, symbolising a thirst for truth and subtly nodding to my Maltese heritage. This gradual reveal of a tap, mirrors the complexities of our own consciousness, where truths and falsehoods coexist in a delicate codependency.

Mary, shrouded in guises, is a fluid Surreal form. Through her, I seek answers and solutions. Her title suggesting the ambiguity of my realm, where certainty and doubt intertwine in an eternal dialogue. In her presence, I’m reminded of the profound interconnectedness of all things and the endless possibilities that lie within the realm of art. But, like water streaming from a tap can be turned off at any moment.