Oh God/ Martina 59/9

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Oh God/ Martina 59/9

Artist Deborah Czeresko American, born 1961

Date2019

Dimensions80 × 24 × 22 in. (203.2 × 61 × 55.9 cm)

Medium10 mm Italian neon, argon gas, outdoor BBQ, vintage women's trophy, blow glass briquettes, concrete

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LinePurchased with funds given by Ann W. Hartmann and Frank Snug, with funds given in memory of Larry Thompson by his children and grandchildren, and the Museum Art Fund

Object number

2020.4

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 02A, Wolfe

Published ReferencesNew Glass Review 42, New York, Corning Museum of Glass, 2022, repr. (col.) p. 127.Exhibition HistoryNew York, NY, Heller Gallery, Collaborations with Queer Voices, from June 28, 2019.Label TextDeborah Czeresko uses humor and food in her work to make statements about gender inequality. Oh God/Martina 59/9 features a trophy of a female tennis player being swallowed up by neon flames atop a grill. The title references the lesbian tennis player Martina Navratilova, one of the best female tennis players of all time, and the number of titles that she won during her extraordinary career: 59 Grand Slam and nine Wimbledon tournaments. Oh God was created for Collaborations with Queer Voices, a group exhibition organized by the neon collaborative Fag Signs (FS), that aims, in part, to reclaim a historically derogatory word for the Queer community. Czeresko explains: [Oh God]…confronts ideas about female physicality and value within the labor of athletics. […] The idea to make the grill still life grew when I unknowingly visited the pyre of Joan of Arc in Rouen, France. Then solidified when the news that the US national women's soccer team filed a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation over the unacceptable gender wage gap they experience. Using neon flames and blown glass charcoal atop the altar of male cooking—the outdoor grill—the victorious figurine is immolated by the grill, which stands in for societally dominant ideas about gender and the body. A masterful glassblower and sculptor who has worked with glass for more than 30 years, this is Czeresko’s first work incorporating neon.