To Sarah Hahn, Lil Wayne is Bacchus, the Kardashians are Graces and Arnold Schwarzenegger is Hercules.
By swapping a celebrity for a god, the Columbus-area artist playfully reshapes antiquity and Renaissance sculptures as commentary on modern culture.
"I tend to question the level we put some celebrities in our lives," she says.
So Hahn uses Gian Lorenzo Bernini's 17th century statue of Pluto, the god of the underworld, clinging to his wife Persephone to depict the tumultuous relationship between pop stars Chris Brown and Rihanna. She also recreated Antonio Canova's Cupid Awakening the Psyche by playing up a rumored kiss between Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.
Hahn's 1- to 5-feet-tall ceramic pieces combine classic attributes of the gods with modern details. They will be on display March 8 to April 13 at the Sculpture Center.
She hopes to finish a piece depicting former Central Intelligence Agency chief Gen. David Petraeus, who had an affair with his biographer, in time for the exhibit.
"I'm not concerned if they like the figure I'm portraying or the piece, but rather that they're thinking about what happened," Hahn says.
