With Madonna & Guadalupe, Dutch artist Martijn Smulders presents a series of skateboards in which religious iconography becomes a field of experimentation. Created in his Stigerwoods studio, these boards reinterpret two major figures from Christian imagery: the Virgin and Child and Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Each skateboard is fragmented into several sections, like a deconstructed altarpiece or a recomposed mosaic. This cut-up imposes a layered reading, forcing the gaze to circulate between the sacred, the material, and the object. The images, deliberately weathered and marked by time, retain a strong symbolic charge while embracing their shift to a medium derived from skate culture.
By confronting these spiritual figures with an urban and secular object, Martijn Smulders questions the persistence of sacred images in our current visual cultures. If you are interested in these boards, they are available on the Stigerwoods website.
