Mater Earth - 2022

Mater Earth, a permanent immersive installation created by Prune Nourry for the Château La Coste estate, is a monumental representation of a reclining pregnant woman whose curves form a hilly landscape surrounded by vines and mountains.

Executed in 2023, this work had its genesis in 2010, when she asked a friend who was eight months pregnant to pose in her studio, in an inflatable pool filled with milk. The liquid created a horizon from which certain parts of the body emerged: the belly, breasts, legs, elbows and one half of the face. The artist photographed her partially submerged model and created a life-sized clay sculpture of the image, which she then moulded and cast in concrete. The stone foundations of this troglodytic structure are topped by a framework of more than 23,000 terracotta bricks and 8,000 mud bricks, handmade with the help of a draught horse.