What’s Inside? Elena Mahno’s Sculptures Reveal the Hidden Layers of Womanhood

Women contain multitudes. That is the foundation of Elena Mahno's latest series—sculptures within sculptures. Last week, Elena stopped by the showroom to deliver her new work. It was late afternoon, dreary and dark. I had spent the day in back-to-back meetings, my brain sluggish, my head a murky swirl of thoughts I couldn't quite get to converge. I felt drained of creative energy (of all my energy). But then, Elena walked in, and something sparked. I love spending time with our artists. They always manage to coax excitement out of me, even when I think there's none left to give.

Elena placed a box on our communal work table, reaching in and gently pulling out bundle after bundle of paper. We gathered around, all peering at Elena's hands as she slowly unwrapped the parcels, tenderly setting piece after piece down. I ran my fingers over the soft contours of the sculptures, lifting each piece to examine and explore how the sculptures fit into each other.

This series is Elena's most figurative work yet, though still abstracted. Each sculpture languidly reclines as though unconcerned with the world, at ease, comfortable in its own fleshy "skin." Featuring sensual curves that invite a soft caress. Each is glazed in a cream-toned hue with peachy accents painted in a watercolor-like softness. The result is juicy and plump like an overly ripe peach plucked straight from the tree. I almost want to bite into it.  

I asked her to tell me about her new series and pulled up a doc to take notes. As she spoke, I listened and typed, briefly apologizing for looking at my screen rather than at her. But I knew I wouldn't remember a word in my burnt-out state. She understood—she's a lover of note-taking herself. I asked a few questions, but mostly, I let her words unfold. As she spoke, I felt that spark ignite. I wanted to write this story. When she finished, I asked if she was comfortable with that. "I need to be at peace with what I am releasing," she said. "But I also need to be at peace with the fact that people will bring themselves to my work. I am glad that a woman will be writing this."

So let me tell you about Elena's new series. It began with a question—one about Henry Moore's reclining nudes. "Why is there never a reclining dude? And why have men made all the historically significant reclining nudes?"

Moore's reclining nudes are among his most iconic works. They are deeply rooted in his exploration of the human form, nature, and modernist abstraction. They are nearly always female, reinforcing the traditional association of the reclining nude with fertility and maternity.

Feminist critique of Moore's work is divided. Art historian Griselda Pollock has argued that his female figures, idealized and impersonal, fail to challenge traditional gender norms and instead reinforce them in abstract, monumental ways. Others contend that Moore's sculptures embody an essentialist view of women as beings tied to fertility, reproduction, and the earth—a perspective that, while poetic, is ultimately limiting.

Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure, 1938, Green Hornton stone

Conversely, some see liberation in Moore's abstraction. Unlike the idealized, hypersexualized female nudes that fill the Western canon, Moore's figures emphasize strength and endurance. They are solid. They are grounded.

Both readings are valid, but I'm not here to argue either. Personally, I enjoy Moore's work for its use of abstract form and materiality. Still, whichever way you look at it, one thing is undeniable: Moore was a man. And there is something uniquely powerful about a woman's representation of the female form.

Elena's work—primarily abstract sculptural ceramics—explores identity and womanhood, shaped by motifs from her past and present. Elena uses clay to convey abstract existential concepts bound up in her experiences as a woman in this world. With International Women's Month approaching, she set out to create her own version of the reclining nude—but with a twist. Because women are complicated. And so are ceramics.

Drawing inspiration from her roots—Mahno was born in Moldova and lived throughout Eastern Europe before moving to Canada in the late '90s, then to the U.S.—she reimagined a cultural artifact from her past: the Russian nesting doll, blending it with her interpretation of the abstract reclining nude.

The first Russian nesting doll (Matryoshka) was created in 1890 by craftsman Vasily Zvyozdochkin, based on a design by painter Sergey Malyutin. The dolls soon became a cultural symbol in Russia and Eastern Europe. Traditionally, Matryoshka dolls depict a peasant woman in traditional dress, each one opening to reveal another, smaller version of herself, culminating in a baby boy. The dolls were meant to symbolize fertility, motherhood, and cultural continuity. Each one "giving birth" to another.

But traditional Matryoshka dolls were made by men, and they reinforced a narrow definition of womanhood—one where a woman's role is primarily reproductive, maternal, and subservient. The dolls have also been read as symbols of confinement, each encased within the other, mirroring how women have been trapped within societal expectations, familial obligations, and inherited roles throughout history.

A rich tradition of women reclaiming the Russian nesting doll motif with a feminist reinterpretation has emerged, and Elena is furthering this genre with her new series. What began as a question—then a riff on a cultural symbol—evolved into a collection that declares: Women contain multitudes. Her series celebrates the complexity of identity, the many roles women embody, and the wisdom they carry within them.

The sculptures radiate warmth, their fleshy peach-toned accents inviting touch and exploration. Soft grooves seem to beckon as if asking your hands to nestle into them, to lift, to uncover what lies beneath, to trace the story of their making. Their forms are languid yet assured—sensual without being overtly sexual, strong yet yielding, embodying a quiet vulnerability. They have a suppleness, a tension between movement and solidity as if the clay itself remembers softness. Like Matryoshka dolls, they hold layers within layers, but instead of the traditional baby boy at the core, Mahno's sculptures cradle a woman, a grandmother——a quiet rebellion against the legacy of the original nesting dolls. With her elongated, delicate neck, the grandmother carries the weight of wisdom and clarity, a testament to the quiet power that women accumulate over time. The sculptures represent the notion that we, as women, are more than one thing.

Mahno has always been drawn to ceramics—a historically female-dominated craft in many cultures. Clay demands patience, but it also allows for transformation. She explains, "Clay is a lengthy process; there is a lot of variability, but the variability allows for a sense of possibility to prevail." Clay can be rehydrated, reshaped, or re-glazed. It exists in an in-between state, constantly in flux. Just like women—fluid, complex, never just one thing.

With her new series, Mahno pushed her skills to their limit. "With clay, the amount of patience you put in, you get back," she says. The process itself became a meditation on womanhood. "It was a really fun technical challenge," she states with a soft smile. Cutting a sculpture in half is bold. Clay doesn't hold its shape when sliced, so she had to dry and fire the pieces simultaneously while maintaining symmetry—an almost impossible feat. That's why most artists don't attempt sculpture within sculpture. But Elena was drawn to the challenge. The act of cutting triggered a spiral of decisions. She was tempted to track each choice in the avalanche of decisions that resulted from the cutting, but ultimately, they were lost in the process.

Still, the cutting was essential. It created a mechanism for seeing inside. Usually, sculptures conceal their inner workings, their structures hidden from view. But for Mahno, exposure was the point. She wanted to reveal the inner world of femininity. To explore the balance between what we hold and what we choose to show.

These sculptures celebrate openness—a bearing of one's insides. It takes work to do that, figuratively and literally. In poetic symmetry, Mahno's process mirrors her subject matter, and in the act of creating, her ideas are actualized. "All of my thoughts are fluffy, and I am giving them shape," she says. "The same with the clay. There's something about the process itself that is nourishing and healing."

Elena's work and words struck a chord deep within me as if she were reaching inside, tracing the mechanisms of my inner world and giving them names. As I listened, I felt seen—understood in a way that was almost unsettling in its accuracy. I am a mother, and as my children grow, I find myself leaning ever deeper into that role, instinctively and wholeheartedly, loving them with every fiber of my being. But I am also so much more. I am a boss, a friend, a creative, a businesswoman, and a wife. I am strong, sensual, wise, naive, and vulnerable. Sometimes, all in the same hour. Having that truth acknowledged and mirrored back to me felt like a quiet, powerful validation of the fullness of who I am.

Women contain multitudes. And Mahno's sculptures make space for all of them.

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