Sucker Punched is derived from the final violent assault. During an attack that lasted for hours and continued into the night, I was punched in the stomach.

The work is constructed from two slip-cast ceramic objects: a small figurine of the Virgin Mary and one of a pair of praying hands. A single hand, once joined in prayer, is inserted into Mary's abdomen, removing both objects from their original devotional context and transforming prayer into an act of violence. The casting molds were inherited from my mother, who had inherited them from her mother. Both were ceramicists.

Mary functions here as both a sacred and political figure. She embodies vulnerability, endurance, motherhood, and moral authority while kneeling to receive the blow. The assault is not directed only at an individual woman, but at what she represents. The image asks how societies that publicly revere women as mothers, saints, or symbols of purity continue to tolerate, minimize, or normalize violence committed against them.

One of the central inversions within Sucker Punched is that the hand itself is a praying hand. It does not merely strike Mary; it transforms a symbol of devotion into an instrument of violence. This reversal allows the work to move beyond autobiography toward a broader political and cultural critique. It asks how symbols associated with compassion, morality, faith, and protection can exist alongside—or even conceal—the realities of violence against women. By converting an object of prayer into the mechanism of assault, the sculpture asks whether cultural and institutional reverence for women has too often failed to translate into their protection.

Sucker Punched carries multiple meanings. It refers to the literal assault that inspired the work, but also to the unexpected nature of intimate partner violence itself. Abuse often occurs within relationships that promise love, protection, and trust. The violence is not only physical; it is a betrayal of the very place where safety is expected to exist.

Like the other works in A MIRror of DREAD, this sculpture transforms lived experience into public witness. What was intended to diminish autonomy becomes an object for examination. Violence that was once hidden in private is relocated into the public space of art, where silence gives way to accountability.

The same molds that once produced devotional ceramics now produce a work that confronts violence against women. Passed from my grandmother to my mother, and from my mother to me, they carry a lineage of women making. I inherited not only the molds but also the means of creation—and the capacity to transform them.