Birdcage

Birdcage is a series of paintings created between 2020 and 2024 that highlights my continued interest in themes of domesticity, grief, fragility, isolation, mental illness, stoicism, and resilience.

In the titular work, Slow Death in Birdcage, a translucent, melting female figure stands in the center of a brightly colored domestic space and appears to be on the edge of a mental breakdown. Her emotional and mental state is made manifest through her physical collapse. She stands next to a birdcage with a dead bird inside, a nod to feminist philosopher Madeline Fry’s analogy for oppression. This surreal, psychological quality permeates all of the work in Birdcage, where breakdowns and negative emotions are facts of life. I want my work to be a catalyst for conversations about vulnerability and empathy as important tools for living and coping in precarious times and can bring us closer to social transformation.

I take inspiration from my collection of vintage porcelain figurines and dollhouses which I use to explore the connection between memory, domesticity, and the evocative power of objects. I was initially drawn to dollhouses because they give me control over the lighting, color, and composition. Still, I continue to use them because they are loaded with gender associations. To elucidate for the viewer what I see in the objects, I arrange them in theatrically lit scenes inside dollhouses, at times transforming them through paint, wax, or resin. For Melt and Come What May, I cast wax inside silicone rubber molds to create candles of the figurines. I lit the candles and photographed them as the form of the body melted away, using the photographs as the basis for my paintings. The resulting portraits are both somber and hopeful, viewing the female body as luminous, in flux, dynamic, and resilient.

Caring for my grandmother, who suffered from dementia for eleven years, deeply influenced my work. Her habit of arranging figurines, flowers, and miniatures in her home inspired me to study how objects can serve as metaphors for the mind and memory. Objects can hold our memories, tether us to reality, and be catalysts for storytelling. Using female and androgynous figures is a deliberate choice, connecting me to my matriarchal lineage as I decide which things from my upbringing I want to hold onto and what I need to let go of. 

Learn more at www.emilyblairquinn.com

Instagram: @emilyblairquinn