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 dance women perform to maintain their public image in a world still shaped by male expectations.
The piece is a digital manipulation of full-body self-portraits, multiplied and mirrored into a striking tableau. Three versions of myself stand in shimmering gold dresses, platinum braids veiling the central figure’s face. Beneath, tattooed legs extend toward cracked egg yolks—symbols of fragility and pressure. One set of toes bleeds, revealing the cost of walking on eggshells in plain sight.
The backdrop juxtaposes innocence with irony: oversized chicks dominate the scene, their softness at odds with the sharpness of the imagery. They playfully underscore how femininity is often infantilised—sweet, harmless, decorative—even while women are expected to endure and perform with grace.
The city skyline lingers faintly in the background: a reminder that this performance takes place on a public stage. Women in contemporary culture are asked to be endlessly adaptable—visible yet controlled, bold but never threatening. The repetition of my own figure mirrors this demand for constant reinvention, as though one version is never enough.
City Chicks is not simply a self-portrait. It is feminist commentary, irony, and personal myth all layered together. The yolk becomes a metaphor for wasted potential, for fragility beneath the gloss, for the impossible perfection women are asked to maintain.
This work speaks to collectors of contemporary feminist art, those interested in self-portraiture, and anyone who recognises the absurd performance demanded of women in modern society. It is both visually striking and conceptually challenging—at once satirical and sincere.
✨ City Chicks is available now through my Saatchi store.
Keywords / Hashtags for SEO
Feminist art, digital self-portraiture, contemporary collage, women in art, surreal feminist photography, feminist symbolism, Saatchi Art, Sarnia de la Maré, ironic portraiture, art about gender roles
Suggested hashtags:
#CityChicks #FeministArt #DigitalCollage #ContemporaryArt #SaatchiArt #WomenInArt #Surrealism #ArtCollectors #FeministSymbolism #TattooedArt
