Ben Ponté

Snow People

The snowman is a unique collaborative public art practice that occupies an essential place in the collective imagination. Cold, white, fleeting and endearingly macabre. The snow man looks upon us with stifling fascination, aware of its impending disappearance, and understandably frozen in apprehension.

Yet, in contrast. we move around these frozen creations with laughter and joy, seemingly unaware of the freedom that movement grants us. The snowman looks on not with envy, but with a hint of pity, as if to notice that, while intoxicated by the power of movement, we remain oblivious to our own disappearance.

The politicization of the word ‘man’, sarcastically eluded to by its omission in the title of this collection, points to the restrictive policing of language that signifies the death of poetic freedom. Political correctness is where poetry goes to die.

The snowman is a totem of resistance.

See also Opening Hearts and Holding Hands collection