Horus rising. Handcut collage 100/70cm.

One of the largest handcut collage artworks taken from the series A Kingdom in Pieces and created almost 16 years ago with my stained glass technique.

Horus was inspired by the image of Jesus and Mary depicted by Michelangelo in his famous frescoes of Sistine Chapel. A very strong scene in symbolism and idea as it showing Jesus in full glory coming back as a king and ruler. Actually i consider it as a sign of rebirth and hope. Horus of the ancient Egyptian religion shared a lot of similar characteristics with the saviour of humanity and it is more than obvious that Christian religion was heavily influenced by him.

A description for the series i wrote back then._ The theme of this series is inspired from religious paintings where the forms and symbols are replaced with those taken from ancient Egyptian theology. The reason of this act is not the revelation that the word of christian religion is based on ideas of older religions but the reminder that these ideas are deeply human and not divine at all._

One important element that i took the artistic liberty to change, was that i portrayed Horus a bull headed figure. It is very different than his usual image, as it is almost always is illustrated as a hawk headed human.Back then i already did two artworks with him having the head of a hawk and i liked to focus more on the rebirth symbolism, so the bull came in mind as it is also the symbol of Mithra, another inspiration of Jesus and this time from a Roman/ Assyrian demi-god.

It is funny how everything is connected in the field of ideas, it is as if our mind is programmed to recognize a certain pattern repeated again and again maybe a little different according to our needs. But is it wise to wait for a saviour when we know that these products of our imagination is a strong indication that the real saviour is inside us?