Reclaiming the Muse

Reclaiming the Muse is my photographic series of hand-built miniature staged tableaux created to counter the patriarchal dominance in historic paintings, myths and stories from a queer and feminist viewpoint.

As an artist working in the genre of staged photography, I construct miniature scenes using characters, props and sets that I source, alter, or fabricate from scratch, to photograph. (No Ai, ever.)

In my series, Reclaiming the Muse, I reinterpret historic artworks and stories through a queer feminist lens. I challenge the patriarchal canon by centering those it has marginalized (women cast as objects of beauty or scorn; queer and trans people rendered invisible or deviant) and restoring them as autonomous agents.

I use dolls and miniature figures as my cast of characters, delivering social commentary on vulnerability, liberation, and defiance. Historically utilized across cultures as tools for psychological projection, these objects become purposeful instruments for art-making. By employing materials traditionally coded as feminine, I challenge hierarchies of gender and artistic value while exploring mythology, cultural norms, and liberation beneath a playful surface that belies the narrative complexity.

 In Divine Intervention, God Herself pointedly offers Adam a pack of condoms. A Modern Family recasts Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait with a pregnant trans man and his wife. I gender-subvert Ingres’ iconic reclining nude in Le Grand Gigolo, turning the male gaze back on itself. A contemporary Susanna chases off elderly Peeping Toms with a blast from a garden hose. I begin each piece with research into the myth, story, or painting that inspires it, often revealing the bias inherent in the original work. I am interested in countering the male gaze and the bigotry embedded in the patriarchal worldview.

As LGBTQ+ and women’s rights face systematic erasure from policy and public life in the United States, I make this work as visual resistance, reclaiming the narratives, materials, and agency that have been devalued or denied, asserting the urgency of our visibility within contemporary art and culture.