400H Gallery
Small Works Show
This five-part conceptual series is inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, a suite of 14 short movements, each evoking a different animal. Using this musical masterpiece as a prompt, I delved into the symbolic nature of five featured animals: The Cuckoo In The Depths Of The Woods, L' Éléphant, Aviary, Personages With Long Ears, and the final movement, Fossil.
This series builds on the spiritual resonance and complexities of the religious experience explored in my work to focus on deeply human experiences shaped by divine contexts. By merging my New-Baroque Expressionism style with narrative elements inspired by Saint-Saëns, this series reflects on the interplay of love, tragedy, and the extent of our tolerance.
The Cuckoo In The Depths Of The Woods
The Meeting
The Meeting depicts a foreboding path among writhing figures that resemble the dense underbrush of a forest. Often associated with deception and malicious intent, the Cuckoo presents a false facade, mimicking the desires and expectations of others to forge a connection before revealing its true nature. At the center, a canopy of trees spirals upward, creating an atmosphere of enclosure, entering the innermost recesses of the Cuckoo’s subconscious.
L'Éléphant
The Second Nature
In spiritual and cultural symbolism, the Elephant represents wisdom, family, and divine feminine power. In stark contrast to the Cuckoo, the Elephant portrays the undisturbed potential of a young woman, untainted by external forces and societal expectation. In parallel to 'The Fall of Man,' the serpent, a symbol of falsehood, is reimagined here in an empyrean space, embraced by womanly forms that embody the beauty and complexity of the feminine spirit, contradicting the ingrained notion of women’s innate seduction and sin, their 'second nature' - (Genesis 2-3)
Acquired
Aviary
Through soft yet confined imagery, this composition conveys the tension between flight and confinement, potential and sacrifice—a paradoxical vision of entrapment and escapism from this malignant relationship. Aspirations stifled, she mourns the fleeting nature of the woman before motherhood as depicted in L'Éléphant. Navigating the constraints of both her inner and outer worlds, she finds solace in this liminal space.
Personages With Long Ears
Pati Vel Non
A biblical symbol of endurance, the Donkey reflects resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity. Inspired by a paraphrase and central theme from the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, ‘To be a woman is to endure,’ this life, like the donkey’s, becomes one of unyielding perseverance—a constant effort to move forward despite the bedlam’s turbulence.
In the left corner, an angel holds a banner reading “Pati Vel Non,” Latin for “Endure, or Do Not,”. Trapped in a life she neither asked for nor expected, she bears the responsibility of endurance and sacrifice, as failure with children depending on her is deemed the only and unacceptable alternative.
Fossil
Arboreal
The final piece in the series reflects on the end of the life cycle, bringing together many of the story’s recurring motifs.
The serpent, reintroduced from The Second Nature, takes on a darker tone in this piece. No longer reclaiming the religious doctrine but instead succumbing to the tolls of adversity that have defined this path.
From the deceptive cuckoo in The Meeting to the gentle doves of The Second Nature, the longing nightingale of Aviary, and now the vulture—a harbinger of death—each bird reflects a tonal progression throughout the series. The vulture consumes every aspect of her life, identity, and sacrifices, even after her death. Just as death is inevitable, so too was her fate.
Acquired