“I do, I undo, I redo.”
(LB, 2000)

This “New Army” is a remake of the seven phallic pairs that comprised The Army of worshippers in my 1992 inscape, TheTemple of the Sun God: seven “Iambes” (female/uncircumsized, with a livecast pair of legs) and another seven, slightly taller “Phallics” (male/circumsized). This time I had a different intention: to redo them as a tribute to Louise Bourgeois. It is a maquette army in answer to her 1968 “Fillette”, a suspended latex phallus swathed in a baby blanket.

“I consider the masculine attributes to be extremely delicate, they’re objects that the woman, thus myself, must protect.”
(LB 1989)

No longer half-crazed with passion and lust, the new army are now guardians more than fighters. Out of compassion for the child Louise, creatures of the sky and the deep come to her rescue. There is only love.

“I transform hatred into love.”
(LB on Utube)

The cicada came last. I had been waiting for a sign: what/whoever comes to me will be It, thinking of dragon/ butterfly visitations in the past.

It is May, the month of many birthdays of people dear to me, like my daughter Mishka and an old friend, Hilda from Havana. I'd been thinking a lot about her lately. On her second visit to our home she was entranced by the sound that would emerge from the garden like clockwork at 6:30 every evening. Cicadas. That crickety sound emanating from the earth and the trees … some call it “chirping”.

Suddenly I was yanked back to the present- bumped from behind my head by a big insect- was it a beetle? They're quite common too, in May, but no- there it alighted, poised at the tip of my 1992 Straggler grand phallus- it had huge eyes, transparent wings and a green body. This is It! Here She is. Last but not least- Cicada for Hilda. Before that, Spider for Louise, Horseshoe Crab for Luigi, Owl for Duddley, Tengu for Ushiro, and, in wish-fulfillment mode, Billy and I as serene Sage/Sagesse.

— Agnes Arellano
May 2012