I am getting ready to embody more of Claude Cahun’s “Heroines” and make them my own.  As I have written before, remarkable French artist Claude Cahun published the text “Heroines” in 1925 as a series of fifteen short stories and monologues. “Heroines” remains a radical text that deconstructs gender roles and stereotypes in Western literature with such figures as Cinderella, Salome, Eve, Sappho and Androgyne. Norman MacAfee translated Cahun’s text into English and the “Heroines” text was published in the book/ catalogue Inverted Odysseys in 1999. I acted out one of the essays, “THE ESSENTIAL WIFE or the the Unknown Princess,” in performative photographs that I made with Luis Branco for the project and book THE UNKNOWN HEROINE which I just published this year. Norman MacAfee allowed me to use the translated Cahun text in my book. Now I intend to embody the rest of Cahun’s Heroines. I have been looking at representations of these heroines in western art history. I will be reacting to these representations and asserting my own flavor and ideas (as well as Cahun’s more feminist interpretations of these women). I hope to start shooting this project in Portugal in a few weeks with Luis Branco. I am going to start with Eve ….

Following are some of these historic visual representations (albeit mostly by Western European white male painters). Maybe we can change these stories.

These are the heroines Cahun writes of in her text: Eve; Delilah; Judith; Penelope; Helen; Sappho; Virgin Mary; Cinderella; Marguerite; Salome; Beauty; THE WIFE or the Unknown Princess; Sophie; Salmacis; and The Androgyne. I hope to explore and embody all these heroines.