The Honeymoon Suite, Juno Calypso
Juno Calypso has created a bizarre world for her alter-ego Joyce: a woman of indefinable age seemingly teetering on the brink of either a nervous breakdown, or death by indifference
Juno Calypso, A Dream in Green, 2015
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485
I would consider it a personal investigation of the self, but my self is a feminine-feminist. So it also becomes political, but I wouldn’t say I’m pandering – certainly not self consciously and even more certainly not unknowingly. Feminism was never a topic I chose to exploit. My
mum raised me with a brutal education on women’s issues, but social media didn’t really exist then. There was no so called bandwagon for me to jump on. It took me years to convince some of my close friends that women’s issues were relevant. So even with the slogans and fads, I’m glad that young women are talking about it.
I don’t feel I am exposing my physical self by appearing in my photographs. It doesn’t feel like me anymore. I cringe every time click-bait articles claim my work is “blowing away perceptions of beauty”. What does that even mean? I use my body, but it’s the emotional self I’m focused on. I like making work where you can see the subject frozen in thought, you can hear them slowly dying inside.
Juno Calypso
Juno Calypso, A Modern Hallucination, 2014
Johann Heinrich Füssli, The Nightmare, 1781
Joyce is not purely a reaction to the male gaze, but also a darkly satirical indictment of the self-flagellating narcissism of the "bedroom-culture of image-making" created by young women, such as Calypso, with the rise of social media, altering the meaning of modern femininity for generations of young people. Juno Calypso is an artist from whom we can expect great things to come.
- Gregory Barker
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