This shoe sculpure is part of a series of 20 sculptures of shoes dedicated to the most relevant women in history, literature, cinema and comics. This project has been commissioned by Superstudio Milan and ANCI, and chosen as opening event for the MICAM 2006.
Salomè
In one act of O. Wilde’s tragedy, Salomè, the daughter of Herodiade, the Herod’s wife, agrees to dance for the king when he proposes her anything she could desire. When Salomè finishes dancing for the Judaea’s tetrarch, in a sinuous dialectical crescendo she obtains the preacher man’s head, Iokanaan, guilty of having offended her mother Herodiade but above all, guilty of not having kissed Salomè. Once obtained the head on a silver platter she can finally kiss the one who refused her. After this scene, Herod figured out the monstrosity to whom he has agreed due to the incestuous attraction for Salomè and order to kill the very object of his desire. This sandal is made of velvet and beads bands, the same I presume she was wearing during her furious dance, and by a blade for heel, as the blade of the sword that first cut the preacher man’s head off and secondly hers.
Courtesy of Daniele Fontana at Whitenoisephotography 2007.
