Votive Tongues

Votive sculpture (present in the polytheist world and incorporated into Catholicism later on) are gifts to the gods in exchange of a favor granted to the believer. The most common “favor” is healing and, conversely, the gift is a replica of the recovered organ.

These clay reliefs crosses this practice with contemporary imagery, to be precise, photographs of sports players showing their tongues. This gesture can be traced back to apotropaic rituals as a form to keep envious spirits at bay. The obscene display of the organ of language (and human nourishment) indicates a point where speech and materiality, eroticism and magic coincides. In the votive tongues, this point is a healing one: language, when separated from the body and its material basis, can only be sick.