Susan Aurinko: Searching for Jehanne—The St Joan of Arc Project

Exhibition Website

Jul 1 2017 - Oct 21 2017

In the summer of 2011, on a photographic expedition to France, Chicago based artist Susan Aurinko visited the 12th century Chateau of Chinon in the Loire Valley and discovered that it was in this chateau that Joan (Jehanne) of Arc had lived for months, convincing the king-to-be, the Dauphin Charles, to grant her an army to raise the siege of Orleans and drive the English from France. Fascinated and obsessed, Aurinko began to research, traveling to France repeatedly, driving rental cars to all the sites where Joan of Arc had lived, prayed, fought, stayed, or passed through in her short life. The photographed sites became the background onto which Aurinko layered three-dimensional images of St. Joan by dozens of both well-known and unnamed artists and sculptors. After three and a half years, Aurinko completed the project producing thirty-seven pieces. The exhibition will explore the iconographic nature of this popular saint through popular culture, literature and feminism and theology.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Photography
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Susan Aurinko

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