Oviri

Oviri is the goddess of mourning in Tahitian mythology. It is also the title of a traditional Tahitian song that tells the love and longing between two women whose restless hearts grow cold and silent to each other. Before it was embodied as Paul Gauguin’s last sculpture and masterpiece, Oviri was one of the inner images in the artist’s “little world of friends” that spiritually invited and eventually took him to Tahiti. In the present work, Oviri, which translates to savage, is leaning on her mysteriously long and thick hair that curiously leaves the back of the head open. She is depicted as indifferently killing a fox while dispassionately caressing its cub thus communicating life in death. With its disturbing physical features as well as its unusual posture, Oviri appears as a strange amalgamation between a wild human being and some unknown creature. Gauguin hints at his empathic connection to the remarkable and unique rigidity of Oviri as if it is part of his inner self: “I am a savage in spite of myself. That's also why my work is inimitable.”