Leonora Carrington – the British-born master surrealist – is the subject of Suzy Birstein’s figurative sculpture The Debutante (2024) and the locus for exploring female narrative potency. Carrington is a piquant subject and Birstein’s title is telling. Born into a wealthy textile family in 1917, as a young woman, Carrington – rather than debuting into Edwardian society – rebelled against her family and social strictures. At a London party, she met the German Surrealist Max Ernst – he was 46 and well-respected and she was 20 fresh out of art school – and moved with him to France. They never married but surrealism took root in her imagination. When the Nazis invaded Paris, Ernst was arrested and Carrington endured a psychological breakdown and was institutionalized by her father against her will. She orchestrated her own escape and then quickly married the Mexican Ambassador to France allowing her to flee to Mexico City. There, Carrington’s art bloomed like a fever dream featuring fantastical creatures, occult symbolism and female energy rising like a white goddess. Her guardian animals were a hyena and a horse, representing rebellion and her means of escape.

In Birstein’s The Debutante (2024), Carrington is represented as an icon of female agency, mythological symbolism and narrative power. Raised on a pedestal of what appear to be moulded shark teeth, wreathed in her own cosmology, Carrington becomes a beguiling force fired by Birstein’s veneration. All of Birstein’s figurative sculptures riddle out a story told through symbols, ornamentation and embellishments. Here the modelling of the horses, both wedded to the figure and raised in bas-relief jumping free of an open window (positioned by Birstein like an open heart), are a reference to Carrington’s only self-portrait, Inn of The Dawn Horse. And the bird nesting in the elaborate headdress is Birstein’s own spirit guardian, a feathered angel of mercy. Birstein’s piece has a profound presence.  And like the ancient Greek korai (a form Birstein has studied), this sculpted figure has both a regal demeanor and a rebel spirit. She appears at once ravaged and ravishing. And fully occupying her own narrative space. 

• Barry Dumka

© Barry Dumka/BCREATIVE CONSULTING