The Red Shoes Project: mars 2011

My friend that modelled for the picture "Tales of Power" was in an accident 6 months ago.
She lost part of her leg and is now learning to walk with a prostetic leg.
I am planning to remake her portrait to better illustrate her life situation as it is now.
More of this later on.

The symbolic mystery of Red Shoes

The red shoes are a symbol for active choice or being the active persona.
I have taken inspiration from the fairy tale of "The red shoes" where the cursed shoes make its wearer dance and dance until she dies. The characters that I portray are most often not wearing the red shoes, but are instead placed in a position where the active choice is put in relation to where and what they are. I am pursuing a mystical idea of always being in this state of mind, a feeling of an uncertain choice that can lead to what or where? Disaster or perfection?

The choice indicates a road that we as humans are traveling. On this road many of the rooms and the "stages" that we visit can leave us waiting or resting, sometimes as a result of evolving into something else or trying to find a reason to go anywhere. Life is as it is; pretty meaningless from time to time, and we are blinded by our fear of this insight. We go deep into ourselves and try to reason with our hearts leading into a melancholic mindset, striving to find meaning where there is none, instead of choosing to walk wherever we want in our red fantastic shoes.

Out of the whole project thus far, only one person is wearing the shoes. This person is a man that has taken the choice to become a woman. An alchemical figure of the hermaphrodite, wearing the red shoes and standing in silence in the sun, looking inside experiencing the peace he/she feels.

The embroidery of the Moon tarot card where I have placed the red shoes instead of the crayfish crawling its way between the towers is a way of showing how to understand the red shoes as a symbol. It is a sort of key to unlock the other images that are crawling their way through the moonlit path.

The Red Shoes Project

Rework planned

The symbolic mystery of Red Shoes

Mira Marlene

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