The Sin Eater (2024)

The Sin Eater (2024) examines the ritual of inherited guilt and the feminine body as a vessel for collective shame. The work reinterprets the old folklore figure of the “sin-eater” through a lens of consumption, sacrifice, and survival.

⤷ At first glance, the piece feels theatrical, almost religious in tone. A woman dressed in decaying finery devours a mass of tar-like substance, her hands and throat slick with black residue. The scene borrows the visual language of Baroque devotion—rich drapery, chiaroscuro lighting, an almost holy intensity—but everything sacred has been replaced with rot.

In traditional lore, a sin-eater would consume bread placed on the chest of the dead to absolve them of their sins. Here, that act becomes grotesquely literal. The figure consumes corruption itself, taking into her body what society refuses to confront. She is both sinner and saviour, punished for her willingness to cleanse others.

I wanted to create a painting that felt simultaneously sensual and revolting. The texture of the tar contrasts against her soft, luminous skin, echoing how women are often made to internalize the ugliness of others while maintaining grace. Her gesture—mouth open, eyes half-closed—walks a line between ecstasy and agony. It’s about the ways in which self-destruction is sanctified, even romanticized, when performed by women.

The piece sits at the core of The Damnation Project, a body of work interrogating the intersections of piety, body, and punishment. It asks what happens when the act of cleansing becomes contamination. The more she consumes, the less human she becomes.

The Sin Eater is not simply about guilt; it’s about expectation. The endless hunger to be good, to be pure, to take it all and say nothing.