As I explore notions of “holding”, I am confronted with the assigned woman’s body as a site for grief and care, a space of pain and healing. In Michaelangelo’s Pieta, Mary is a chair—her body has been newly aligned by the sculptor into one of an armature, out of bodily proportion to what is physically possible and concealed by excessive drapery. Mary holds: presence and absence; life and death; human and deity. Mary embraces and impresses. There is a cacophonous simultaneity in the holding of these dualities that I am interested in exploring in my own sculpture.