{ u n i v e r s a l / r e f o r m e r }
Niki is a name of Greek and Persian origin, meaning PEOPLE OF VICTORY. This broom takes grand victorious sweeps on the political field. Sweeeeeeeeeepn oh sweeeeeeeepn.
Les Rayons de la Lumière sont le Spectacle de mon Ame!
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep.
Comme le Soleil.
What is not of the Light will crumble under these Divine Rays.
What is of the Light will Shine Spectacular and Victorious.
She is like a superstar or a the Salvator Mundi. She creates a a Lightning space for women with strong voices. Like a Dicotheque, like a Holy glittering Mountain. I made this broom and was watchin, listening, feeling, hearing Niki de Saint Phalle, the avant-garde artist that was one of the late twentieth century’s great creative personalities. Oh jajaja I loved Niki and her work! In the evening I would say Goodnight Nanas! And she would shoot and tell me our work was not finished yet! I watched that movie...
Gloria Steinem, writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer saw Niki de Saint Phalle with a leather jacket and cowboy boots and no purse, and said: This is the first Free Woman I’ve Ever seen. I want to be just like her”. Rebellious, complex, iconoclast, collaborative, trailblaizing. She made things in a way they took up space and that was really radical at the time. It’s the 1950’s, women are wearing dresses and have little purses. Niki was raised to get married to a good family, to raise kids, to be a housewife basically. So she absolutely rejected that in every form. She started working in the early sixties, she was often surrounded by male artists, often the only woman artist in several social groups. Already at that moment Niki is emerging as a sort of icon, a rebel. That kind of status she played with throughout her life.
(gun fire)
I was shooting at myself, at society and its unjustices.
The nanas were ofcourse provocative as these gigantic female forms that were fysically taking up lotsof space. They were bright and colourful, they were really curvy and round, really exagerated features that she endowed with a certain sort of power, calling upon female goddesses from history and antiquity. She was envisioning a matriarchical society and so she was plotting out a way that these Nanas could take over the world. Did you not Imagine her chewing up and digesting her public? I think she did!
When they came out they were different from when they went in. She was interested in dreams, she was interested in subconscious space. She always had a social message in her work. She was envisioning a more equitable society.
I am Niki de Saint Phalle and I make monumental sculptures. BOOM!
I am not the person who can change society except for showing some kind of vision, of these happy Joyeus eh eh.. domineering women. That’s all that I can do. But it’ s incredible the women... I mean they work in the day. They have emancipated themselves, and yet politically we play no role..really... we don’t decide anything..
and women are much more... they are natural... biologically they are much more eh eh ..not only more conservative..but they care about .. I mean we feed our children, we have completely other roles and possibilities, and that’s why I believe that women could administrate this world much better. Black power and women power... when they get together...they take over everything..haha..that’s the solution!
A world of eh... a new world of Joy.