Lady Liberty

Artist and designer Job Smeets was born in Belgium in 1969. He graduated cum laude from the Eindhoven Design Academy in 1996. Two years later he founded Studio Job, which is regarded as one of the world’s most influential players in the field of design and art. Smeets’ controversial work has a wide reach. It ranges from bronze sculptures, digital graphic art and fashion shows, to a Dutch postage stamp and fully furnished apartments.

“Lady Liberty” is a contemporary interpretation of the famous Statue of Liberty in New York. The sculpture was part of a major American exhibition that was inspired by a road trip Smeets made through America. Along the way, he realised that the quintessential American icons he saw – from cowboys, auto repair shops, statues and monuments to Elvis Presley’s Graceland – had been subject to wear and tear and were now part of a bygone culture.

Smeets’ bronze statue shows the symbol of freedom in a flying storm. The waves crash against the lady’s pedestal and her torch and robe flutter in the wind. Like Salvador Dalí, who added drawers to his version of the classic “Venus de Milo”, Smeets has provided his “Lady Liberty” with hidden drawers and doors. The head can hinge backwards, and in order to access one particular compartment, the entire statue must actually be tilted. It adds an extra layer of complexity to the work and suggests that things are not always as they seem.