The artwork “The Grenade in the Heart”

is by sculptor Laila Vestergaard.

Educated at the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Academy in Istanbul.

Laila Vestergaard often works with granite in simple forms with a detailed surface, where images, signs and patterns emerge in the interplay between the raw and the shiny. The sculptures are created with a small hammer and chisel, where small parts of the stone are chipped away. The stone is thus given a lighter expression and a play between light and dark is created.

The artist has decorated the hospital church in Gødstrup. She has also produced several works and decorations in public spaces, including “Cheese trough” on the old dairy grounds in Skovlund. She is also the artist behind twelve reliefs that are mounted on the wall at the library here in Varde. This work is titled: Perspective 2015.

The Grenade in the Heart

The sculpture group “The Grenade in the Heart” here at Sct. Nicolai Church Square consists partly of two large stones, where you can see a grenade top balancing on a large heart, and a grenade lying next to it, and partly of several smaller stones, showing a more or less eaten apple and a hand grenade that is incorporated into the heart in several stages.

The artwork relates to the story of the Fall in the Bible. Laila Vestergaard wants to focus on the fact that the way in which the concept of sin has been interpreted has obscured the possibility that the consciousness of sin could also play a constructive role in our lives.

In the sculpture, the hard meets the soft. It is as if the shape of the heart is able to handle the grenade in a dignified way. The heart dares to exist in spite; to let itself be seen. “Is that really what Christianity’s greatest and strongest message is? That we are seen and loved as who we are, and that we can exist in joy over that realization?” asks Laila Vestergaard.

The artist has a thesis that every human being has the seed of a grenade hidden within them. The question is therefore how do we prevent the little grenade in the heart from growing, petrifying, detonating and spreading destruction. Perhaps it will be easier to forgive others if we can also see the contradictions within ourselves. It is about not letting ourselves be weighed down by the grenade, but about learning to handle its presence with tenderness, reflection and insight - both in ourselves and in the other.

“How do we reconnect with the beating heart? Do we have any choice but to try?

We cannot stop all evil, avoid suffering, but we can try to minimize it. I don’t want to lose faith in that possibility,” says Laila Vestergaard.