Immersed in art from a young age, Paloma Varga Weisz (b.1966) trained in traditional wood carving, casting and modelling at a small school in Bavaria before attending the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1990s. Her enigmatic sculptures interrogate themes of memory, mortality, and psychology. At first glance, Lying Man resembles a sleeping figure. On closer inspection, however, a charred and dismembered body is revealed. Disturbing and mysterious, the burnt lime wood sculpture evokes a murder victim, an autopsy, or even the aftermath of a saint’s martyrdom. Indeed, inspired by medieval religious carvings and Renaissance paintings, Varga Weisz has created numerous figures with saint-like wounds and afflictions. Using a duplicating lathe, she created this work from a full body cast of human rights activist and former Rwandan child soldier, Tindyebwa Agaba. Instead of joining the body parts together, she has kept them separate, referring to the figure as a ‘destructed soul’.