A “bride” is a familiar word to all of us. Normally we associate it with a joyous celebration and the beginning of a new life. A “bride” brings a smile to our lips and images of food, dancing, laughter and merry-making. A “bride” is the centre of attraction, the focus of the marriage celebration, the only instant in a woman’s life when she is completely adored, admired, carefully scrutinized, congratulated, or even envied by a large group of people.

In art, a shift in perspective can be a powerful tool for examining and conveying ideas. In this series I have taken a given situation and a widely accepted image and endowed it with different plausible meanings in order to provoke a genuine reaction from the viewer, rather than the usual preconditioned attitude which automatically surfaces when seeing or thinking of a bride.

We all know that not all brides are the happy beings they are pictured to be. We all know that with a new life - marriage - come many disappointments and “living happily ever after” is an old worn out cliché. Yet the word “bride” does not usually evoke such sentiments. By shifting the frame of reference I was able to add new aspects to the word “bride.” Some of these may seem repulsive or outright cruel, but, as in the fairy tale “The Emperor’s Clothes,” it took one look at reality to point out that all the admiration and the clapping of hands given to the Emperor parading his new clothes was based on blind assumption, a predetermined reaction not at all connected with empirical truth.

Many artists have used metaphors in order to reveal an original thought or meaning. They hoped the viewer would appreciate the meaning in a new light which in turn might lead to solutions not otherwise anticipated. In this series I have addressed on behalf of women universally, the many faces of the marriage ceremony, ranging from the deliriously highs to the extreme of the dreaded morning after the night before. I have used several fairy tale themes because these ancient myths passed down generation after generation have served as life models for many of us. All of them promote virtue as the ultimate winner, but the models must be befitting the time in which we are living, and in the 21st century our perspective of “virtue” has changed. My work challenges these role models as being obsolete in our day and age.

Lilian Broca