BFAP Magazine 2023 - Flipbook - Page 51
Sophie Cooke
In Cooke’s work, she is exploring the
performance of femininity while existing in
a late-stage feminism/capitalism hellscape.
She’s interested in the idea of her ‘goblin
girls’ as a way of examining what it means
to exist as a woman today. Half woman, half
monster; performance vs reality. The ‘woman’
performance, under the late-stage capitalism
self-surveillance of social media, has become
irrevocably intertwined with the true messiness
of personhood. The ‘woman’ half is the true
monster. Cooke sees the fantastical forest world
in her paintings as another layer of the interior:
if the dark moody bedrooms of her previous
work represents the inside of her goblin girl's
brains, then the forest is just another world lying
below the surface, deeper in the subconscious.
Her goblin girls are slowly making their way
into her fantasy forest, but sometimes she just
wants to paint melancholic beheaded birds- if
Cooke can look at her paintings and say “ugh
she is me”, then she feels like it’s working.
BFAP
51
2023