Exit Paradise: Eve, Salome and Judith 2021 - 2023

Why is Eve blamed for our banishment from Paradise? Is it Eve’s fault or the Serpent’s? And why are they often conflated? Sherry Wiggins performs as Eve wrapped in a golden snakeskin dress in a stage-like setting under a quince tree in several performative images taken by photographer Luís Branco. Wiggins combines Eve and the Serpent (the seduced and the seducer) in one form. In the image Exit Paradise, Eve sheds her snakelike skin/dress and bows down under the quince tree before her exit.

Wiggins depicts the biblical princess Salome, bedecked and bejeweled, going for a drive in the triptych Salome at Sunset. in Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, the princess asks for the head of John the Baptist after he rejects her advances. Wiggins portrays Salome in the black-and-white portrait Salome for Oscar Wilde.

In the ancient tale, The Book of Judith, the Jewish heroine Judith beguiled and seduced General Holofernes, then cut off his head to save her people from his invading army. Wiggins portrays Judith with the head of Holofernes in one hand and a sword in the other in The Sadistic Judith.

All three of these heroines have been besmirched as femmes fatales. These works were all created in collaboration with photographer Luís Branco as part of the HEROINES project. Wiggins and Branco’s photographs reinterpret the fictions and histories of these women, always in critical dialogue with the misogynistic viewpoints that have been imprinted upon them. These works were part of the exhibit Exit Paradise at Seidel City in Boulder, Colorado. Wiggins and videographer Robert Kittila made a short video explaining the exhibition and the artists’ process and intentions in creating this work.  

(photography by Luís Branco, video and installation shots by Robert Kittila)