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Artist: Sandro Trapani
Title: Medusa
Medium: Limited Edition Bronze and Wood Sculpture
Size: TBC
Status: SOLD
Artist Statement:
On 9 August 1956, over 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the Pass Laws. Their slogan, “You strike a woman, you strike a rock”, became a lasting declaration of women’s strength and emancipation.
Like that protest, the myth of Medusa carries layers of meaning that shift with each retelling. Artists often portray her less as a monster than as a woman whose grief overshadows her fear of death. The sculpture captures the moment before Perseus’ strike, her sorrow standing for all women who suffer violent ends. Yet, even in death, her power is exploited for Perseus’ gain, reflecting how women’s strength is often appropriated.
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) reminds us that “one is not born but becomes a woman,” emphasising how social norms construct womanhood in the service of men. Medusa, too, becomes a symbol of patriarchal suppression, a powerful woman reduced, silenced, yet still feared.
As Sandro Trapani notes: “As most ancient Greek authors of Medusa were male, she represents how fearful men are of powerful women.”
The myth of Medusa endures because it continues to mirror society’s unease with women’s power, then and now.
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