The title of this work is a nod to Friedrich Nietzsche's famous book Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man" in Latin), in which the author reflects on his life, philosophy, and ideas. In this work, Nietzsche presents himself as a sort of philosophical Christ who, instead of sacrificing himself for humanity, seeks to reinvent existence on his own terms, rejecting established conventions. This book is a manifesto of his philosophy of life, the will to power, and the liberation of the individual from social and moral constraints.
In contrast, the work Ecce Femina ("Behold the Woman") also aims to be a manifesto, but of a different nature. In a Christ-like and sacrificial posture, a woman kneels at the center of an aquatic cave landscape, where a fiery red rock meets a translucent turquoise water in a fracture line upon which the female figure stands. Something traverses her being, and to the force of these primordial natural powers, the woman surrenders. From her lips flows a liquid that goes from red to blue, echoing the colors of this natural setting, which frames the struggle between these primal forces: earth and water, matter on one side (mater, materia, mother) and on the other, water, the primal liquid. As the matrix of the world, the woman creates living human matter in the primordial water of her gestational sac, which is her own inner cave. This liquid, first red and then turquoise, symbolizes the blood that transforms into the water of life as it drips down her body, just as the woman perpetuates life from her own blood and flesh. Unlike the Nietzschean dream of the Übermensch, the woman can only reinvent herself beyond the primordial natural forces that act within her and tear through her at her own expense.
