Woman - snail

Woman - Snail has one of the most beautiful title stories from the 2018 symposium. While sculptor Grigore Sultan was working on this piece, a mother, Cătălina, came with her four-year-old daughter, Eliseea. The child asked him what character the work would be, and the artist said that she didn't know yet. Then he asked her: "But what do you see?" And the girl replied: "A woman snail". The sculptor liked the idea so much that he decided on the spot: that's how the title would stay. And so it stayed.

And, indeed, the form supports this image: the lines flow, undulate, curl, and the round void on the right can be read as the spiral of the shell - the "home" of the snail. It is a work about plasticity and the paradox of sculpture: from a very hard stone, the artist obtains a form that seems soft, alive, almost organic. Finally, the piece also shows us something essential about art: sometimes, meaning is born from the encounter between the work and the viewer.

The snail symbolically means home carried with you, protection, interiority, slow pace, patience, withdrawal and return. The woman (in sculptural language) can mean body, fertility, sensitivity, flow of line, but also presence and grace.

Together, Snail Woman suggests a being that combines fragility with autonomy: a presence that carries its own shelter, moves slowly but surely, and preserves its essence.

Therefore, Snail Woman is a sculpture that invites free association, and the child's reading becomes a kind of "epiphany" - a moment in which the form finds its title, and therefore its public identity.