Prune Nourry: Reflection

Inspired by the U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve (SPARs) of World War II, this artwork pays tribute to the women who served.

Based on the research of historian Donna Vojvodich, artist Prune Nourry connected with the family of the SPARs veteran Yeoman Third Class Nellie Locust and sculpted Reflection from her features. With the full visage revealed by the water’s reflection, the piece evokes memory, resilience, and the often-overlooked role of women in history.

The sculpture sits within the larger park designed by local landscape architect Raymond Jungles. The artist and landscape architect collaborated to encase a young red mangrove seedling within the head. With the overgrown roots climbing over its surface and the surrounding maritime forest anchoring it within the landscape, it creates a dialogue between nature and remembrance at the heart of the work.

About Prune Nourry

Born in Paris in 1985, Prune Nourry lives and works between New York and Paris. A 2006 graduate in wood sculpture from the École Boulle in Paris, she is represented by Galerie Templon (Paris, Brussels).

Prune Nourry raises ethical questions relating to the concept of balance in the broadest sense: the body and its healing process, demographic imbalance due to gender selection and scientific aberrations, ecosystems and the interdependence between living species. Her works combine sculpture, installation and performance, and are often the subject of rituals, sometimes involving burial or disappearance, which she documents via photography and video. Her oeuvre is geographically and temporally contextualised through investigations drawing on disciplines outside the art field. Her projects are international in scope, resulting from meetings with specialists – geneticists, sociologists, anthropologists and archaeologists – who, like her, are often "guided" by the tangential chance discoveries known as serendipity.