Sovereign (2023)

Sovereign (2023) confronts the politics of the female body and self-representation. Through Baroque lighting and symbolic contrasts between living flesh and sculpted form, Georgina M. Cox explores autonomy, objectification, and the act of reclaiming visibility.

⤷ When I painted Sovereign, I wanted to talk about ownership — the kind that isn’t given or earned, but taken back. The piece came from thinking about how women’s bodies have always been staged, sculpted, and edited to fit ideals that were never their own. I imagined a space where those expectations (the mannequins) surrounded someone real, breathing, unapologetic.

The seated figure exists in tension with her surroundings. She’s soft, warm, and alive, while the mannequins around her are cold and idealised. Their stillness amplifies her presence; her skin carries the kind of light they can’t hold. The name Sovereign came naturally as it speaks to bodily autonomy, to the quiet defiance of simply existing as you are in a world that prefers you sculpted.

Visually, I wanted a theatrical stage-like arrangement. But the context is modern. Instead of saints or muses, we have mannequins: silent witnesses of consumer culture and beauty politics. The contrast between their smooth surfaces and her textured humanity is what drives the painting’s emotional weight.

I wanted the viewer to feel both admiration and discomfort. The mannequins wear fragments of red fabric, referencing both desire and danger — the colour of commodification and rebellion. The central figure’s expression is one of release, or perhaps reclamation: a moment of closing her eyes to the gaze that has always defined her.

Sovereign continues my broader exploration of feminine identity, agency, and self-perception within contemporary visual culture. It’s a work about the power of returning to your own body after it has been turned into an image by everyone else.