“When I started doing these new series of sculptures for the upcoming exhibition on eroticism, my thoughts wanted to go as far back in time as possible to trace the history of erotic literature in the old world. I have lived most of my adult years in Italy and happen to have read and studied some Classical Latin stories in Italian…My favorite story is the myth of Cupid and Psyche. I have read it from the Metamorphosis written by Apuleius, a Latin writer. This work is one of the very few pieces of Latin literature preserved in its entirety to have reached us. The literary origin of this piece, “The myth of Cupid and Psyche”, could be traced back from the 2nd century B.C. through the Milesian tales believed to have been written by Aristides of Miletus from ancient Greece. It is indeed very interesting to connect from this remote past that has enriched many of the erotic literary masterpieces from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, from Marquis De Sade and D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, up to the Story of O and Emmanuelle.

I thought of representing the figures of Cupid or Eros and Psyche in their intimacy, in the sexual act. I have always thought of sex as something extremely private and intimate. This is the reason why the dimensions of the sculptures are small. . In another series of sculptures … I will use the motif of the monstrance, a familiar church paraphernalia. The monstrance itself will be in bronze and it will contain details of some of the erogenous parts of the body in alabaster. From afar, the luminosity of the alabaster piece and the monstrance-inspired motif puts us in a quasi sacred state or an ecclesiastical setting.” - Duddley Diaz, 2010