Art

These two imposing statues are in a central place in Belfast. They caused a storm when first conceived 30 years ago as they were meant to represent sex workers as ordinary women. After a high profile public debate they were "repurposed" in modern jargon. An Ulster Unionist MP made a statement saying he heard there was a monument to prostitution going up and he had seen a model of them and he was told they had breasts, but he couldn't see them because he hadn't his glasses on at the time. I kid you not. The young sculpter said about those women.... "Women don't do it for the craic like, women do it for money or because they need to feed their kids," she added. The design featured women's many roles and is what we see today - two women carrying the "symbols of their work in their bodies". "The mother has knitting, she has baby's dummy, washing bottles and colanders and bits of text taken from women's magazines and statistics, similarly the other woman has a type writer, a telephone, cash register and apron. "I had all these objects that I inserted into their bodies to symbolise the fact that they are workers and they work, bar workers, domestic workers, cleaners, people who work in hospitals with the sense that all of these things were traditionally badly paid and didn't have holidays."
 Wow!