my Cleopatra (with a snake and a cigarette), Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

There is truthiness in the image above titled “my Cleopatra (with a snake and a cigarette).” Photographer Luís Branco and I made this image in the first few days of our time at the Cortiço Artist Residency in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal in February this year. I like that Cleopatra is sitting with me. My Cleopatra stares out at the camera / Luís / the viewer and she (me) appears undaunted and complicit; she assents to being seen and photographed.  We hold a cigarette in one hand and a snake, entangled with our jewelry, in the other. Our boobs are obscured,  but we wouldn’t care if they were bared.

This image reveals something about my process and practice with my various heroines. These iconic and ancient women—Eve, Salome, Helen of Troy, Sappho, Cleopatra, the great goddess Isis—they enter my body and mind. Together we reimagine and reinvent our histories. We think about our accomplishments, children, lost lovers, the ghosts of our past lives. Luís Branco helps to push and pull me and them across the boundaries of time and place and captures the images in rapid fire.

I realize that I am treading on controversial territory, joining  my sixty-something-year-old-white-lady face and body with the infamous Queen Cleopatra VII (the last queen of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in ancient Egypt). Issues of racism, sexism, misogyny and nationalism are at play, as are the inherent problems with the ways her story has been told (until recently, mostly by white men). Cleopatra has been my most difficult heroine to date and I puzzle with why.

I found an essay “Disorienting Cleopatra: A Modern Trope of Identity,” by scholar Ella Shohat, that helps me think about my art practice with Cleopatra in a new way. Here is a brief but pithy excerpt from Shohat’s essay:

“Engaging with the subject of Cleopatra almost necessarily entails addressing the question of image making and visual representation. For millennia, her story of love and death, of power and sexuality, of domination and subordination, and of the imperial intercourse between Greek, Egyptian, and Roman civilization has excited the popular imagination, triggering passionate opinions about her identity. The historical and the fantastical have mutually nourished each other. The uncertainty about her looks, meanwhile, has allowed each generation to shape her image in the form of its desire. Each age, one might say, has it’s own Cleopatra, to the point that one can study the thoughts and discourses of an epoch through its Cleopatra fantasies. The ancient queen therefore constitutes more than a historical figure who can be relegated to the domain of archaeology and Egyptology; rather, she allegorizes highly charged issues having to do with sexuality, gender, race, and nation, issues that reach far beyond the geocultural space of her times.”

Right on… and for me I would add “age” to Shohat’s “issues having to do with sexuality, gender, race and nation.” So what does Cleopatra have to say to me? How does this monumental figure meld with me? And what are my Cleopatra fantasies?

my Cleopatra (blue sky), Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

One of my Cleopatra fantasies arrived on the hillside at Montemor-o-Novo. The sky above was brilliant blue and the earth lush green below. My Cleopatra has a 1960s cinematic glamour in these images. I am not sure if the wig works, but the “real” Cleopatra and other ancient Egyptian royalty wore wigs, as did Elizabeth Taylor in the lavish 1963 film Cleopatra. These images convey my Cleopatra’s bravery, confidence, fierceness and sensuality.

my Cleopatra (in the grass), Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (drama queen), Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

It was Luís’s idea to shoot my Cleopatra in the café in Montemor early in the morning. I call these images in the café the “my Cleopatra (morning in Montemor) series.” It was near the time of carnival in Portugal so the other clientele in the café were okay with our occupation of the space. The harsh fluorescent lighting shines on my Cleopatra. We are world-weary—we are having a coffee, a beer, a cigarette, a break. We are isolated and alone in the café, though others are present—most notably, a world-weary man whose gaze is as diffuse as ours is direct. We are well aware of our own objectification / subjectification in relationship with the camera.

my Cleopatra (morning in Montemor) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (morning in Montemor) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (morning in Montemor) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

We shot the below images of my Cleopatra immersed in the landscape near the clothesline on the grounds of the Cortiço Artist Residency. I took off the wig but kept the wig “grip” on my head. These images invoke the “drag” quality of my embodiments with Cleopatra. The bad makeup, the elaborate jewelry and the golden gown contrast with the simple and mundane quality of the clothesline and the surrounding landscape. I love the fake tiger-skin blanket. Both humor and a tragic quality pervade these images of “my Cleopatra (clothesline drag-queen).” And, yes, a woman can be a drag-queen.

my Cleopatra (clothesline drag-queen) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (clothesline drag-queen) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (clothesline drag-queen) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

I wanted to create another historical painting re-enactment, like the ones Luís and I have created with other heroines. We were inspired by the 1796 painting “Death of Cleopatra” by French painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault. Cleopatra’s death is a subject that has been represented in paintings, films, plays and more. Cleopatra committed suicide in August of 30 BC as the Roman general Octavian arrived in Alexandria with the goal of capturing and killing his political rival, Mark Antony, Cleopatra’s husband. Octavian sought to wrest control of the Egyptian empire from Cleopatra and Antony. There are differing stories of how Cleopatra took her own life.  Some say it was by the bite of a venomous snake, others say she took some kind of poison. I wrote a blog post about the subject of her death and how it has been represented and most likely misrepresented. Here is the link: https://sherrywigginsblog.com/2023/01/22/the-death-of-cleopatra-posted-january-22nd-2023-in-boulder-co/

The Death of Cleopatra, Jean-Baptist Regnault, 1796

Luís and I set up a photoshoot to create our own version of Cleopatra’s death inspired by the Regnault painting. I wanted to play with the overwrought orientalist drama and beauty that Regnault’s painting portrays. In the painting Cleopatra is shown with her two maidservants. We found a model, a friend of a friend, who was willing to work with us and act as Cleopatra’s maid servant. I embedded my Cleopatra’s body into this scene. Luís shot hundreds of images. In the end, we chose one image that Luís and I are both happy with. I call it “my Cleopatra (for Regnault).”  This was a new way of working for me (with a model or another subject), and I think it was quite successful.

my Cleopatra (for Regnault), Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

Artifice, improvisation and sometimes magic mingle in my work with Luís. This last series is the “my Cleopatra (snake wrangler) series.”  We were shooting my Cleopatra on the upper terrace of the house at Cortiço. Luís was shooting me from the ground floor below. I was wearing my over-the-top Cleopatra makeup and jewelry, and I had the snake. We were fooling around with perspective; I was hanging over the terrace wall and Luís was lying on the ground below. The perspective (and gravity and age) makes my face and skin and jewelry hang and droop and dangle. My Cleopatra appears both glamorous and grotesque, sexy and silly, strong and vulnerable. My fantasy here is that my Cleopatra has beaten the odds and has lived to a ripe old age. Of course, we are still surrounded by the danger (the snake) of being misunderstood and misrepresented.

my Cleopatra (snake wrangler) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (snake wrangler) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023

my Cleopatra (snake wrangler) series, Sherry Wiggins and Luís Filipe Branco, 2023