Julie Curtiss: Maid in Feathers @ White Cube Gallery, Seoul

Rife with symbolic subject matter, Julie Curtiss’ exhibition Maid in Feathers is a personal meditation on early motherhood and psychological transformation. In this new body of work, Curtiss explores the shadow-side of quotidian scenes in acrylic and oil paintings, graphic gouache works on paper and lacquered sculptures. A hybrid bird-figure appears throughout as a proxy for the self, a means by which the artist negotiates the existential drama of self-realisation that accompanies birth and motherhood. At times, using the bird-figure to also conjure surreal scenes of servitude, Curtiss also explores the sexual politics underlying domestic and reproductive labour, animating it with comic levity.