Anna Ostoya, “Slaying”

Artemisia Gentileschi’s 1620 masterpiece, Judith Slaying Holofernes, gets a forensic makeover courtesy Anna Ostoya, a Polish artist who lives and works in New York. Gentileschi’s original depicts the Jewish heroine Judith, who saves her people from the Assyrians by beheading their leader Holofernes after plying him with alcohol. A follower of Caravaggio, Gentileschi is that rare instance of a woman artist within the Old Master canon. Feminist art historians have maintained that the painting is meant as a symbolic expression of revenge for Gentileschi’s rape by two men, including her tutor. Ostoya takes a more dispassionate view, treating the subject as a crime scene through a series of quasi-Cubistic canvases and black and white photomontages.