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Showing posts with the label feminist photography

City Chicks, Photography from tthe Selfie Art Series by Sarnia de la Maré FRSA

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City Chicks by iServalan (Sarnia de la Mare) hand altered photo #selfieart #digitalart #women Image Description The artwork, titled City Chicks , presents a surreal, layered digital collage featuring three mirrored self-portraits of the artist. Each figure wears a shimmering gold mini-dress with long, platinum-white braids cascading forward, veiling the face of the central figure. Their tattooed legs dominate the lower half of the composition, extending toward cracked egg yolks that drip against an urban skyline faintly visible in the background. The repetition of the figure creates a sense of rhythm and power, yet their toes press against fragile eggshells, one visibly bleeding, amplifying the tension between strength and vulnerability. The backdrop of oversized chicks introduces irony, tenderness, and contrast—softness against steel, innocence against performance. City Chicks – Walking on Eggshells in a Golden Age of Performance In my latest work, City Chicks , I explore the fragile...
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Tribal Grandmother: How Colour and Monochrome Transform the Same Portrait

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Tribal Grandmother: Between Electric Reverie and Monochrome Memory She stands at the edge of two worlds — one drenched in colour like a fevered dream, the other stripped bare to shadow and breath. The wind moves through her feathers. The shore hums beneath her feet. She is myth, she is memory, she is the witness and the storyteller. The Tribal Grandmother portraits exist in two worlds — one bathed in hallucinatory colour, the other carved from shadow and light. Both hold the same figure, the same costuming, the same gaze — and yet they tell entirely different stories. In the colour with blue wash edition, the coastal flora background — photographed on a recent nature shoot — bursts into a surreal palette of electric blues, magentas, and violets. It’s an almost impossible colourscape, part coral reef, part alien dream. Against it, the Victorian-inspired costume of layered feather petals and voluminous tulle becomes a luminous apparition. The tattoos along the figure’s legs feel lik...
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The Bridesmaid, Altered hand painted digital photogaraph by Sarnia de la Maré

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by iServalan (@sarniadelamare) The Bridesmaid by Sarnia de la Maré is a surreal bridal portrait in mixed media digital portrait Victorian style. It uses double exposure effect from layers of fine art and contemporary bridal artwork to create a surreal self-portrait photography. The Bridesmaid Mixed Media Digital Portrait by Sarnia de la Maré The Bridesmaid reimagines the timeless role of the wedding attendant through a surreal, dreamlike lens. This self-portrait draws on Victorian hand-painting techniques once used to enhance and romanticise early photographs, now reinterpreted in a digital medium. The process began with a base photographic portrait, which was digitally “hand painted” to soften features, heighten colour, and add painterly depth, echoing the delicate brushwork of 19th-century studio artists. Two public domain images—a bridal figure and a pastoral landscape—were then overlaid using double-exposur...
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Press

Press Release

For Immediate Release
Artist Sarnia de la Maré unveils a feminist triptych-in-progress: self-portraiture, satire, and the fragile stage of modern womanhood

Sarnia de la Maré FRSA has released City Chicks, the third work in her ongoing selfie-art series, joining The Bridesmaid and Tribal Grandmother to form what is emerging as a powerful triptych-in-progress. This body of work places the artist herself at the centre of a conversation about women, performance, and fractured identity in the digital age.

  • The Bridesmaid (2025) uses Victorian layering techniques and double exposure to create a ghostly, painterly portrait. The work highlights historical erasures of women’s agency while reasserting presence through layered time.

  • Tribal Grandmother (2025) — in both monochrome and a blue-wash colour version — invokes the matriarchal figure as symbol of wisdom, strength, and continuity. The piece speaks to generational memory and the silencing of elder voices in contemporary culture.

  • City Chicks (2025) moves into satirical territory. Here, three golden, mirrored figures tread on fragile eggshells while oversized chicks look on. Bleeding toes expose the cost of “walking on eggshells” for public image, while the absurd chick imagery critiques the infantilisation of women and the absurdity of performance.

Together, these three works form the opening act of a broader project that reclaims the selfie as intellectual and artistic rebellion. The repetition of the artist’s own body—mirrored, fractured, reimagined—collapses the divide between artist, subject, and critic, making the work both personal and universal.

The triptych establishes the tone for the larger series-in-progress: an evolving dialogue between history, myth, and satire, with women’s visibility and vulnerability at its core. Collectors now have the opportunity to acquire these works at their inception, as the series expands into a fuller exploration of identity, endurance, and feminist commentary.

City Chicks is now available exclusively through de la Maré’s Saatchi Art store.

About the Artist

Sarnia de la Maré FRSA (also known as iServalan) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and writer whose work spans visual art, music, and experimental cinema. Her practice often integrates feminist critique, neurodiverse awareness, and environmental commentary.

Press Contact

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For interviews, images, or further information, please contact:
sarniadelamare@gmail.com