ticketsMember | Make a donation

Virgin (exposed)

Damien Hirst British
2005
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
Virgin (Exposed)　provocatively reimagines Edgar Degas’s The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer as a pregnant specimen, while its title references the Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception. Its garish colors recall the anatomical models and illustrations found in physicians’ offices. Partially flayed and cross-sectioned, the work also evokes historical anatomical female figures whose abdomens could be opened, often to prurient effect, to reveal reproductive organs. However, here there is no frisson of revelation and concealment, and instead the female interior is unsparingly exposed in the public space of a gallery.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Virgin (exposed)
  • Artist: Damien Hirst (British, born Bristol, 1965)
  • Date: 2005
  • Medium: Acrylic paint on resinEd. 9 of 15
  • Dimensions: 24 7/16 × 6 5/8 × 11 5/16 in. (62 × 16.8 × 28.7 cm)
  • Classification: Sculpture
  • Credit Line: Mugrabi Collection
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2017
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art