Whose Safety?

Wax, LED Light, 20 × 20 × 26 cm

Commissioned by Wimbledon Museum and Young Masters. Whose Safety? draws on a Victorian fire extinguisher grenade from the Wimbledon Museum collection to explore how historical objects, here associated with Suffragette movement, continue to shape contemporary questions of power, protection and political agency. Cast in translucent wax and illuminated from within, the sculpture preserves the familiar form of the original while transforming its material presence.

Created in response to the museum's collection and the history of the suffrage movement, the work reflects on the uneasy relationship between protection and resistance. After decades of peaceful campaigning, some suffragettes turned to acts of civil disobedience and property damage when existing political structures failed to recognise their demands. The fire grenade becomes a quiet metaphor for this tension: an object associated with protection that, in another context, could itself be mistaken for a weapon.

Part of Laura Dzelzytė's ongoing wax series, Whose Safety? explores how material transformation can reveal new layers of meaning within familiar artefacts. By translating culturally significant objects into wax, the works preserve the traces of history while exposing their inherent fragility. Material transformation becomes a means of reanimating history, preserving cultural memory while opening it to new interpretations and contemporary questions.