This project is a reflection on the surreal times we experienced during Covid-19 quarantine: a time that has been marked by blurred lines between our physical reality and my reflections on our exposure to external media.

The mural with its overlapping lines is a juxtaposition of the performances we put on for social media: our disguises, our sometimes false representations of what we present to the world behind our screens. The drawing is a snapshot of countless poses and dialogues publicised on social media. Intermingled fictional animals represent the symbolism in fairy tales (i.e., a fox representing the trickster) while domestic animals represent reality, the grounding force between two fictions, artificial concerns and myth.

My compositions deliberately distort perspective and focal distances. Sizes shrink and swell as the viewer goes back and forth on the picture plane—a plane that creates a pictorial stage, an interplay of how the natural world, the imaginary world, and the artificial world collide. The distortions echoe our experiences in physical isolation, when our self-image became larger than life. 

Inspired in part by Cindy Sherman’s series Disasters and Fairy tales (1985-1989) and Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment (1976), I use animal imagery to express caution in a world that focuses too much on external appearances. Whereas Sherman’s work has an “underlying theme of unease” (critic Joanna Lowry), I use images from fairy tales to symbolise the danger of losing one’s way under the pressure of appearances. Rollo May’s The Cry for Myth refers to fairy tales further, to underline their role as guidance. 

My series speaks to the performance society puts on to the world. I use the tension between animals and figures to highlight the differences between fact and fiction, the mundane    combined with magical literature as a poetry of contrast. I depict “unreality” by overlapping images not normally seen in the same environment: erasing, drawing over, experimenting with markers and pastels, showing receding and bourgeoning space. Simple lines, fleeting images, transparency of form. 

The drawings will be hung in layers, rather than flat on a wall—as we layer thought upon thought in a time of introspection.