Liten kerub (Little Cherub)

At the café in Stadsparken, there is a small fountain with a mysterious little figure rising out of its centre. It is an infant sitting perfectly calm and still in the middle of the small raised pool, with one hand on each leg. The composition is symmetrical and the body’s centre of gravity low. The child is naked and the sculpture can be interpreted as a metaphorical representation of naked, unadulterated simplicity – a calm beyond the world of cultural codes that an infant has not yet entered into.

But if we look more closely, we see that the artist has sneaked a lot of cultural codes into her sculpture. In the child’s right hand, we see a very small bow. Between its feet is a small quiver of arrows and on its back are small wings. It is Cupid, in other words. Anna Molander has joined the age-old tradition of depicting the ancient god of love as a “putto”, one of the chubby male children who began to populate the visual arts during the Italian Renaissance. But all of these putto attributes are so discrete that the child’s mythological origin remains secret to anyone who doesn’t look closely.

Molander has said that she was inspired by Italian fountains when she was travelling. In addition to the Italian impulses, the fountain also shows a kinship with Buddhist imagery. The sitting, symmetrical posture is reminiscent of a sitting Buddha, and under the child, on the base of the fountain, are two rings of what appear to be stylized lotus leaves in relief. In Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, the lotus flower is a sacred symbol and holy and divine figures are often depicted sitting over, or in, a lotus flower.

Finally, and to make it all even more of a puzzler, we notice that the figure is sitting on a pot, and at one point during the sketching phase of the sculpture, it had the working title Cupid Sitting on the Potty. How do you interpret the work?

Anna Molander lives and works in Glanshammar and has a number of public works on exhibit in Örebro.