Ostrzę (The Blade) (2026)

Ostrzę (The Blade) is an original piece of mixed media photography on wood from the Retrieval series. Rivers created this piece using her own photography shot in Northeastern France and creative commons zero archival images from The Met Open Archives. Each element is hand cut and laid using analog collage techniques. Other elements include acrylic paint and medium. Artist statement: Through the Retrieval series, I work against the inherited iconography of medieval stained glass, recovering the feminine presence it was built to suppress. Each piece layers my own photography — shot across locations in France — with archival materials, returning the stained glass form to what it was shaped to obscure: women not as symbol or margin, but as origin. These are not reconstructions of a lost past. They are retrievals — what cultural memory would hold if it had never been severed from its source. In this piece, I wanted to reconstruct a window based on the Arthurian myth of the Lady In the Lake. In traditional storytelling and iconography, the passive woman provides the sword to the king. Instead, I reworked the imagery so that she is the sword, the power, the force from which only a true leader could draw. I also layered in the triple goddess motif to honour the old one Hekate and my Polish heritage (matryoshka). Finally, I chose stark background photography to create a sense of the old faith and ancient power of women.