VERHEXEN

VERHEXEN is an examination and confrontation of the assumptions, fears and fantasies about female identifying individuals within the iconography of the Witch.

Female self-sovereignty has long been associated with the punishment of rebellious women. Fear of female power and sexuality is deeply rooted within the American psyche. Despite hundreds of years of perceived progress, the modern woman is currently as much of a “target” for persecution as her historical counterparts.

The panic, violence and patriarchal abuses of power that propelled America’s 17th Century witch-hunts are still perpetrated to limit and control female autonomy. A regressive view of female power and sexuality is, and always has been a major component of the political sphere in the American landscape.

The history of the Witch is one that is largely written by and for, men. Their complete authorship on a subject recognized as the ultimate threat to their predominance has taken root in our collective history, virtually erasing the experiences of the women directly involved.

Using the Witch as my protagonist, I am reframing her largely male-authored historical narrative and deeply misunderstood folkloric past, to address still repeated patterns of history. This work is a response to and reclamation of the patriarchal belief in the inherent wickedness and carnality of women that still persists today, directly from those practicing and upholding its historic tradition.

Presented as an historical allegory, portraits influenced by archival text and testimonies from the infamous Salem Witch trials move seamlessly between past and present, anecdotally linked to reveal hidden connections and underlying parallels of experience to the modern woman.