Standing by Kiki Smith looks like a cross between the Virgin Mary and the old woman from The Shining that Jack Nicholson makes out with for a second.

Smith tries to go more for the Madonna look with her outstretched, upturned hands and de-sexualized body (despite being naked). Smith welded the Virgo constellation made of starfish onto the woman’s chest to give that extra ~spiritual~ vibe and make sure people were feeling peaceful rather than terrified when they looked at her. The only thing un-Virgin Mary-esque about Standing is the fact that the model was an older woman. Usually it’s the young people who are willing to strip down to their birthday suits and model for Smith, but this case was different. Smith was trying to get a less hyper-sexualized body for this piece to sidestep the whole male gaze thing that can pretty much ruin everything.

This model was an older woman who was suffering from Lymphoma and had already gone through chemotherapy and lost her hair. Smith cast her current body for this piece but used the head from a previous sculpture of the same woman made before she was sick so that Standing could have a full head of hair. The face was from a sculpture of the woman lying down, so if you look closely at Standing, you can see that one cheek protrudes a little more than the other from gravity. Science!  Smith’s work was always very age-centric and this sculpture is the perfect image of the idea that as a woman ages, whatever doesn’t leak, dries up.

Smith walked around the UCSD campus until she figured out exactly where and how she wanted to mount this lady. She ultimately decided to make a cast of one of the dying eucalyptus trees as a stand, which is cool because it like totally fits into its surroundings, you know? The cast was made so well that you can actually see beetle trails, which was the tree’s ultimate cause of death. Trees die, we die...you get the idea. The sculpture also fits into its surroundings because it serves as a watering hole for all of the little creatures that inhabit UCSD’s campus, which makes this representation of illness peculiarly adorable.