Marie the Maenad
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Marie the Maenad ∞
Marie the Maenad
Mixed Media (40 x 30 in.)
Artist: Majeye
Resurrected through ritual, crowned in powdered curls and radiant defiance, Marie the Maenad emerges from her gilded grave—not to beg pardon, but to revel, slice, and dance. Once Marie Antoinette, once queen, once scapegoat of opulence—now reborn as a Dionysian fury, an oracle of ecstatic vengeance sewn in satin and blood.
This is not a painting in the traditional sense. It is a shrine—stitched, bled, and conjured into being. Every element on the canvas was once lived: the dress worn by the artist in ritual, the Pontificis wine consumed in trance, the blood-red stains not painted but lived through, invoked, transmuted. The damask gown has been meticulously sewn to canvas, its folds shimmering with sacrificial glamor and divine madness. In her lap, a severed ear—a nod to Van Gogh’s infamous act of offering—this time for her watchers, her tormentors, her silent observers. She has cut off her own ears, not out of sorrow, but power. She refuses to hear you now.
Behind her, a maelstrom reminiscent of Van Gogh’s Starry Night swirls like the breath of madness, prophecy, and release. Her mask, her feathers, her eyes—every detail implicates the viewer. Who watched her fall? Who now watches her rise?
She holds the blade in one hand, and in the other: a bottle of Pontificis wine, scratched with the year of her death—1793. But death has not dimmed her. She is radiant. Terrible. Divine. A Maenad in full bloom.
She is no longer asking for understanding. She is demanding witness.
And then—she dervishes.
