Berenice

Over the course of his career, Kiefer has depicted a number of real and mythological women, from Elizabeth of Austria to Brunhilde and Lilith. Berenice (1989) refers to the third-century BCE legend of Princess Berenice of Cyrene (present-day Libya). To ensure the safe return of her husband, Berenice sacrificed her long locks of hair and dedicated them to Venus; the locks subsequently disappeared from the temple where they had been laid and were said to have been transformed into a new constellation in the night sky. In this sculpture, Kiefer alludes to the myth by means of the partial wreckage of an airplane made of lead—a wing and a fuselage that emits a disturbing stream of human hair, suggesting spent fuel or toxic black fumes. Lead airplanes are a recurring motif in Kiefer's iconography. Lead has been a key material in the artist's work as a whole since the mid-1980s and is replete with a range of associations, both historical (stemming from its importance in alchemy) and personal. The disjunctive combination of the plane and the smokelike plume of hair lends this work a charged and unsettling quality.