Angela (After A. M. Maiolino), 2020
Cranberry juice on linen
11" x 5.5”
This piece was inspired by Angela Carter’s book “The Bloody Chamber,” which reimagines old fairytales with a kind of feminist spin, and highlights many of the characters transformaXons and sexuality in beauZul language. Here’s a quote from her story “The Tiger’s
Bride,” where she is describing the woman’s transformaXon, like her love, into a Xger:
He dragged himself closer and closer to me, unXl I felt the harsh velvet of his head against my hand, then a tongue, abrasive as sandpaper. ‘He will lick the skin off me!’
And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent paXna of shining hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beauXful fur. (Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber pg. 75)
Gorgeous, right? I love how she surrenders to this transformaXon and takes pleasure in it.ComposiXonally, the piece was also inspired by a series of photos by the arXst Anna Maria Maiolino, a Brazil-based Italian arXst who works with all different media including performance and photography about self and subjecXvity.