Kalliope, immortal inspiration

Kalliope is one of the nine Muses. Muses are the goddesses of art and science. They are the daughters of Zeus, the supreme god, and Mnemosyne, one of the six Titanides and the personification of memory. Kalliope had two sons: Linus, who is relatively unknown, and Orpheus. The father of Orpheus is Oeagrus, king of Pieria in northern Greece, although Apollo is also mentioned. Zeus begot the nine Muses with Mnemosyne over nine nights:

• Erato: love poetry and lyricism
• Euterpe: flute playing
• Kalliope: heroic epic, philosophy, and rhetoric
• Klio: historiography
• Melpomene: tragedy
• Polyhymnia: rhetoric and sacred songs
• Terpsichore: dance and lyric poetry
• Thalia: comedy
• Urania: astronomy

A temple in which the Muses are worshipped is called a 'mouseion' in Greek. The term 'museum' is derived from this."

Sculpture, mixed techniques, 2025
64 x 33 x 25 cm

Hekabe

Loss and dignity in the face of fate

Hekabe was the chief wife of the Trojan king Priam. She had nineteen children with him, including Hector, Paris, and Kassandra. Due to the Trojan War, she lost her husband and children and was forced into slavery.

In Homer's Iliad (ca. 800 – 750 BC), Hekabe is mentioned six times—for instance, when she begs her son Hector not to fight Achilles (XXII.86), and when she mourns his death in this battle (XXIV.748-759). She describes Achilles as "a savage man whose central liver I would like to sink my teeth into and eat" (XXIV.212-214).

In the works of Euripides (ca. 480 – 406 BC), Hekabe serves as the protagonist of two tragedies. In The Trojan Women, Euripides recounts how she is taken into slavery by Odysseus. In the tragedy Hekabe, he describes how she loses her children Polyxena and Polydoros, and how she exacts gruesome revenge on Polymestor, Polydoros' murderer (she kills his two sons and gouges out his eyes). Agamemnon sides with her and punishes the blinded Polymestor. Polymestor then predicts a grim fate in which Hekabe transforms into a dog and drowns.

Hekabe is the personification of sound matriarchal political governance, as well as the embodiment of the suffering inflicted upon women and children by the disastrous, patriarchal exercise of power—which frequently results in wars and other forms of violence.

Mixed techniques, 2025
95 x 36 x 30 cm

Kalypso: hidden temptation

Homer's Odyssey begins with the invocation of the Muse. The poet asks the Muse to explain why Odysseus—despite all his adventures and dangerous journeys, and in spite of his ardent desire to return home—has been prevented from doing so for seven years by the nymph Kalypso, who wants to marry him. She promises him immortality and eternal youth. 

The gods take the Muse's request to heart and agree—with the exception of Poseidon—that enough is enough. The divine messenger Hermes is sent to pressure Kalypso into letting Odysseus go, which eventually happens.

Kalypso is the daughter of Atlas, the Titan who, as punishment for losing the battle against the Olympian gods, was condemned to carry the celestial vault on his shoulders. Kalypso was exiled to and hidden on the island of Ogygia. Once every few years, a hero would pass by, with whom she would fall in love, but with whom she could never build a lasting relationship. Odysseus was one such hero. He remained under her spell for seven years and, according to Hesiod, they had two sons together.

Mixed techniques, 2025
110 x 40 x 30 c

Arete: a friend at the end

Queen of Phaeacia (Scheria)

The epic uses a layered structure of narrative levels. The story of the Odyssey is told through a flashback technique. It is a frame narrative—featuring stories within a story—as is frequently seen in literature. Homer, assuming he was the author, describes the stages of the Odyssey in retrospect. For Odysseus, this represents his final stop before his newly made friends bring him back to his homeland, Ithaca.

Sculpture pair 2025:

Alkinoos, 32 x 27 x 37 cm

Arete , 29 x  25 x 32 cm

Aphrodite: Cunning beauty

Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. She was born at sea from the silver foam on the water that had gathered there after her father Uranus was castrated with a diamond sickle by his son Kronos. Aphrodite floated to the beach on a shell, blown by the winds Zephyrus and Aura. The Tuscan Renaissance painter Botticelli (1445 - 1510) created an iconic painting of this "shell journey". 

Aphrodite is married to the crippled god of blacksmiths, Hephaistos, following a successful blackmail attempt by the latter on his mother Hera. Aphrodite's lover was Ares, the god of war. With him she had seven children: Harmonia, Deimos, Phobos, Eros, Himeros, Pothos, and Anteros. She also maintained relationships with Dionysus, Hermes, and a mortal, the Trojan shepherd prince Anchises. From this last union Aeneas was born, one of the few who managed to flee to Italy after the destruction of Troy. 

Aphrodite was one of the three goddesses, alongside Hera and Athena, who competed for a golden apple "for the fairest", which a resentful goddess had thrown into the gathering during a divine wedding. She won by bribing the sole juror, Paris, a disowned son of the Trojan royal couple Priam and Hekabe. All in all, this led to the war for Troy, which is another story.

Sculpture
Mixed techniques, 2025
60 x 35 x 28 cm

Orestes: haunted by vengeance

Orestes is the son of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra, and the brother of Elektra, Chrysothemis, and Iphigenia. Agamemnon wanted to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to obtain favorable winds so he could sail to Troy with his fleet. Those winds had been withheld from him because he had offended Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. At the very last moment, the girl was rescued by Artemis, who replaced her with a deer.

This intended sacrifice of her daughter drove Klytaimnestra to murder Agamemnon upon his return home from Troy. Her son, Orestes, avenged his father's murder by killing both his mother and her lover, Aegisthos. Because of his crime, Orestes was relentlessly pursued by the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance.

After being rescued by Artemis, Iphigenia was placed as a priestess in one of the goddess's sanctuaries in the Crimea (Tauris). Years later, she met her brother Orestes there. She was forced to condemn him to death because he had entered the sanctuary as an unwanted foreigner. This proved too much for her to bear. Using a clever ruse, they fled together back to their native homeland of Mycenae.

The story of Orestes was dramatized by the ancient playwrights Aeschylus (525–456 BC) and Euripides (480–406 BC), as well as in a modern adaptation by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) titled Les Mouches (The Flies), published in 1943.

Sculpture
Mixed techniques, 2026

Tormented Orpheus

Orpheus is a mythological musician, singer, and poet. He was the son of King Oeagrus of Thrace and Kalliope, the muse of epic poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric. A day before his wedding to Eurydice, his fiancée is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus descends into the underworld to try to get her back. 

Through the spell of his singing and music, the god of the underworld, Hades, and his wife Persephone allow him to take his wife back to Earth. This is on the condition that he will not look back during the journey to see if Eurydice is following him. Over the final meters, he looks back and Eurydice disappears forever into the underworld. 

Defeated and tormented, Orpheus sits in the forest and sings only sad songs. He no longer looks at women. This is not to the liking of the Maenads, a group of violent nymphs from the retinue of the wine god Dionysos, who perform wild dances in ecstasy and tear people and animals apart with their bare hands. That same fate befell Orpheus, which eventually reunited him with Eurydice in the underworld of Hades.



Sculpture, 2026
Mixed techniques
50 x 31 x 31 cm

Antigone: moral responsibility

Oedipos was exiled, and his young daughter Antigone accompanied the blind man until his death. 

Later, Oedipos' two sons fought for the kingship of Thebes, and both were killed. Their uncle, Kreon, who had become king, ordered a state funeral for the son who defended Thebes but forbade any rites for the son who had attacked the city. Antigone could not bear this and performed symbolic funeral rites for her brother on the battlefield. As a result, she was sentenced to death. 

This drama explores the tension between formal law and moral responsibility. 

Sophoklos wrote the tragedy Oedipos Rex between 429 and 425 BC, and Antigone in 442 BC.

Sculpture, 2026
Mixed techniques
40 x 28 x 30 cm