Second look

French artist Odile Mir is back granddaughter's Nonagenarian for an encore, thanks to her role in reissuing her modernist designs

- AMY SERAFIN

Tucked into a courtyard behind an apartment building in Toulouse, a small house with a yellow floor overflows with photos, religious icons, art books, drawings and sculptures. The last include a larger-than-life statue of a slim nude woman with an exaggerated vulva, her head replaced by a visibly male flying dog. On a recent autumn day, the house’s 96-year-old owner, Odile Mir, greeted visitors wearing a loose shirt over jeans and dangly silver earrings. A cane was the only concession she gave to her age.

Mir is a self-taught artist who had a seven-year parenthesis as a self-taught furniture designer. She is best known for her sculptures, which she makes using wire grids covered with plaster, then painted leather or paper. Inspired by mythology, her artwork is both alluring and disturbing – headless women, disfigured animals, bodies wrapped like mummies. She says she doesn’t consciously choose her themes: ‘At night, when I’m lying half asleep, I feel shapes enter my body. They tell me what to do the next day.’

Her work is powerful and original, though she never gained public renown. ‘I worked a lot, but nobody knew who I was,’ she says. ‘No gallery was interested, and I didn’t have the right contacts. Plus, my work was too big – no madame wanted that [she indicates the headless sculpture] in her salon.’ It probably didn’t help that Mir is a woman and has spent most of her life in the countryside.