The Many Faces of Marie

The series invites viewers to reflect on the duality inherent in the human condition, embodied through the shifting personas of Marie. Her silent, interior self, intimated but never fully revealed, echoes the layered complexity of the psyche and the performative roles women are continually expected to inhabit.

Rooted in symbolism and surrealist visual language, the work centres on the interplay between red and white. White, traditionally associated with innocence, virtue, and idealised femininity, becomes the stage upon which Marie Antoinette’s inner conflict unfolds. Once vilified and caricatured by political propaganda as frivolous, immoral, and out of touch, her historical figure serves as a poignant metaphor for how society misreads women who step outside of prescribed norms.

The red apples, rich in symbolic weight, evoke knowledge, temptation, and original sin, but also rebellion, self-possession, and the burden of feminine archetypes. They become emblems of both danger and autonomy, reminders of the power and precarity embedded in womanhood across time.

Through this lens, Marie is not just a historical figure, but a mirror, reflecting the enduring tensions between how women are seen, what they are allowed to be, and the quiet complexities they carry beneath the surface.