Nude Wing (2011) is a monumental sculpture by Fiona Banner aka the Vanity Press (1966, Merseyside, UK) featuring a Tornado aircraft wing positioned vertically. As part of a series in which Banner repurposes combat aircraft, the work transforms military units into complex and striking sculptural forms that question a common understanding of aesthetics. Reaching six meters, Nude Wing’s sheer scale and polished surface heighten its totemic presence as it reflects both the viewer and their surroundings.
Engraved into Nude Wing’s polished surface, fragments of text describe a female nude posing in the artist’s studio. It draws parallels between the form of the wing and the human body whilst emulating ‘nose art’ – where cartoonish, often sexualised women are painted onto aircraft fuselages –, a form of folk art, an ongoing practice within the military that emerged during World War I.
Banner’s conceptual and multidisciplinary work explores the porous boundary between image and text. For over thirty years, the fetishization of combat, from Hollywood to jingoistic military displays, has been central to her research. The artist draws on childhood memories of Royal Air Force airshows or walks in the Welsh mountains, where the pastoral silence would be shattered by the roar of aircraft. In her work, Banner questions visual cultures tendency to mythologise and aestheticize conflict. She challenges us to decondition our gaze and reconsider these ambivalent objects and the contradictory feelings they evoke, somewhere between fascination and repulsion.
‘That we find [these planes] beautiful brings into question the very notion of beauty, but also our own intellectual and moral position’, says the artist. ‘I am interested in that clash between what we feel and what we think.’
Nude Wing, which became part of the Mudam collection thanks to Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann, with the support of the members of the Cercle des collectionneurs du Mudam Luxembourg, is presented in dialogue with New Collection Display.
