In this series for T, Emily Spivack, the author of “Worn Stories,” interviews creative types about their most prized possessions. The artist Barbara Kasten’s Madonnas are interspersed among other meaningful treasures from her family and travels — and represent her feminist point of view.

I’ve had this obsession with Madonnas since I was in high school. Not from a religious standpoint, but from a feminist one. I was at an all-girls Catholic school when I first made a painting of a Madonna, which I still have today. That was when the feminist part of me began to come out. I was interested in female power, and Mary was the ideal way to reflect on that.

I probably have 25 cultural representations of Madonna in my collection, which are mostly outsider art. They’re from my travels to Mexico, Lithuania, New Mexico, Turkey. To me, they are about the everyday acceptance of women in places of dignity rather than depictions of women as an art form. It’s not a Venus-in-a-half-shell kind of thing. These Madonnas are more connected to how women are honored and respected in many parts of the world.