A round, smiling mother hippopotamus lets her young play on her back.

In Egyptian mythology, the hippopotamus-headed goddess Tarouet was the protector of children and mothers. This could make her formidable in times of danger.

I imagined a mother goddess in my own gentle way, sharing a peaceful, playful moment with her children.

Silver nitrate gray patina

Sophie Verger is a fairy who knows how to transform an emotion into an animal, a sensation, a felling in a recollected memory. She also suggests to us with a lot of humor a lovable identification with the animal model and beyond this observation the fact that in all her work, the child alone has its place with her, spontaneously capable of including the existence of the animal in her own fundamental values.

Sophie Verger combines anthropomorphic beings with human characters, and she mixes the human and the animal world in surprising ways. Through these mutations, her universe becomes moving, unstable, something is falling apart and uncertainty is twisting in it like a rift.

Sophie Verger plays with the pure reason of the look and lies the opposition of her interpretation.

Beyond anthropomorphism there is also, often, the notion of games. With animal representations worthy of Pompon but going beyond a simple realistic look, Sophie Verger sculpts poems, whole tales in one piece...