Iconoclast Idolatry: Paradoxal Figurations

Abstract

Inspired in the thought of Aby Warburg, this paper articulates creation, historiography and iconology in reinventions and appropriations of icons of the Virgin Mary together with images of genitals. When looking for interstices between strict imagery research and the poetic project Idolatria Iconoclasta, an historiographical problem became itself its own atlas, by constituting a large collection of references and coincidences under a disruptive sample of saints and vulvae. The labyrinthine ramifications of the images, as well as the selection criteria that placed them together, show the difficulties in extracting a unitary synthesis from this blend, that re-signifies both poles in tension: virgin and vulva.