The Visitor

The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, 2022

​

The Visitor took the medieval 'The Unicorn in Captivity' tapestry as a starting point to consider the transformation and endurance of the mythical creature. The unicorn is an unstable figure, part beast, part fantasy, a visitor from a mythic past. In medieval Europe, within the Christian Church, the unicorn became a metaphor for Christ. In pagan times the wild beast with its phallic horn could only be tamed by a virgin making it symbolic of purity or chastity. It was a popular subject for medieval tapestries, often depicted in captivity, hunted or tamed making it a symbol of control or suppression of the female body. This creature, loaded with patriarchal symbolism, is now symbolic of magic, innocence and heteronormative notions of femininity.​ In The Visitor,  the unicorn embraces fragmentation, distortion and theatricality as carnivalesque and grotesque feminist strategies. 

​

​

​

​