Veronique Cote: Artist Statement

In my work, I aspire to present multiple facets of a woman's identity, trying to avoid the simplistic depiction of preexistent social clichés .   My research is directed towards finding cultural metaphors that could be embodied in many ways.

            In my most recent production, I construct a personal mythology through the cultural fictions that are fairy tales. I use these mediated images as metaphors for the process of enculturation, shaping people's ideas of sexual power. More directly, I review certain popular myths by creating objects that testify to feminine experiences inspired by the tales, but not necessarily dictated by them. Then, I put these “wearable sculptures” in relation to their staging as photographic images that position them as part of a myth. Even though the objects themselves are artifacts of a personal reading of tales that have sculpted the collective imagination for centuries, the images are traces of my experience as a woman. In the Big Bad Wolf series for example, I wove together arrow-shaped cocktail stirrers pointing towards the viewer as a metaphor of the ambiguity between the offensive and the defensive in the story of Little Red Riding Hood .