The Burial of Love

For years my work has been centred around themes of female empowerment, the women’s movement and finding a voice for women’s stories. My new body of work “Standing Strong” moves slightly away from the imagery of dominant, confident, powerful women. Although the women in this series are still adorned by symbols of a male hero culture, such as military jackets, pilot outfits, helmets and goggles, their poses and gestures are lacking the aggression and hostility of previous works. Instead heroines are reserved, defensive and contemplative.

Introspectively, I have arrived at a turning point after realising we need to focus on valuing female qualities of caring, introspection and nurturing, instead of forcing women to be more ‘manly’. We still live in a male-centric world; hence we cannot drop our armour yet. But we can allow ourselves to embrace femininity and female qualities. A value shift like that would have far-reaching consequences for the well-being of all people, making the world a kinder more inclusive place, especially when it comes to the remuneration of employees in caring and nurturing professions (such as in health-care, schooling, service providing) and also in the way we approach policy-making and governing.