Francesca Shapiro

Lilith serves as a very admirable and relatable biblical figure to me. Her being made from the earth made her immediately aware of her equal footing with Adam. Her rejection of Adam solidifies her stance, while also queering her as a character. Her leaving the garden of Eden serves as liberation rather than banishment.

The installation this was supposed to be viewed as is no longer feasible, therefore I don’t know what this series means to me anymore. It was supposed to be about my struggle with wanting to excommunicate myself from the church while having religious family and celebrating religious traditions.

I didn’t have the ability to think conceptually about my work at all before going to art school. I thought I wanted to make art just to make things that are aesthetically pleasing. Now I don’t feel confident producing something if I don’t have strong conceptual backing to it. Why would I make something if I don’t have anything to say?

I like world-building/narrative a lot. I usually compose scenes that are fairly easy to read with the meat of the scene being pretty obvious. In this sense I buried Lilith to embody her birth. In another case I poured gold paint on my subject to simulate an opulent baptism. I have no shame in saying I’m bad at reading art so the work I make is easy to read.

I had a really clear image of how I wanted to create my installation initially and I knew I wanted to shoot the story of Lilith. I had a lot of issues creating the story of Lilith because this was my first time creating a narrative series, and there is a lot of action in the story. I was really fixated on making something that didn’t seem over the top or gaudy, and I was stuck because of that for a long time. In the end, my initial idea for my installation changed because of my photos. I guess I thought I knew what it would become?