In this watercolour series, Simnett explores ancient and folkloric displays of power and dominance, drawing on Slavic folklore and the Greek ritual of skirt lifting, known as anasyrma.
In Greek tradition, skirt lifting is associated with protection, fertility, or ridicule, most vividly embodied in the figure of Baubo, who lifts her skirt to console the grieving goddess Demeter. Skirt lifting in Slavic folklore carries a similar symbolic charge, expressing the paradox of feminine power. The ambiguous gesture appears at once helpful and threatening, and is often associated with warding off demons. Simnett connects the ambiguity of this gesture—part trickery, part distraction—with cultural anxieties surrounding women’s bodies and public space, a line of inquiry that resonates with Sophy Rickett’s seminal photographic series Pissing Women (1994). Simnett’s watercolours stake a similarly defiant claim to space and visibility, viscerally expressed not only through her figures’ commanding postures but also in the expressive gushes and swirls of white-dappled marks that evoke bodily fluids.
