VILLAINS
PARTICIPATORY PORTRAIT PROJECT
Women’s stories reclaimed through art.
Exposing the language used to make them the problem.
THE PROCESS
Meet the Villains
Every portrait begins with a woman, a story, and the words someone used to silence her.
THE DESTRUCTION
I Destroy Every Portrait
Each portrait is destroyed using the words, materials and actions from her story. What was used to diminish her becomes part of the work — before the story is reclaimed from her perspective.
Your Story, Your Words
Tell me what happened, what you were called, and what you wish people had understood. You can choose how you’d like to be named when your story is shared.
Support the Project
Villains is an independently funded art project. The portraits are created and shared without charge to the women who take part. Your support helps me keep painting, listening and sharing their stories.
02 Contribute to Villains
Villains takes time, studio space and resources to make. Contributions help me keep listening to women's stories, developing and creating their portraits, and sharing them with the world.
03 Share the project
Every share helps these stories travel further — and perhaps reach someone who needs to hear them.
TAKE PART
How Villains Works
First, I paint you.
You tell me what happened, what you were called and what you wish people had understood. You send me a photograph, and I paint your portrait — beginning with you as you are, before anybody else's words are allowed into the frame.
Then, I destroy it.
I alter the portrait using the words, labels and judgements that were used against you — cutting, covering, painting, writing and transforming the work to tell that part of your story.
Painted portrait submissions are currently closed.
More than 200 women trusted me with their stories when I opened Villains for submissions. I want to give each of them the time and care I promised, so I won't be reopening submissions for painted portraits for a good few months.
But Villains is still open. It just needed another way to grow...
VILLAINS, IN INK
YOUR STORY
Painted portrait submissions may be closed, but Villains is still growing.
I’m creating a new series of ink portraits, drawn over the words used against you and other women throughout Villains.
Your story will be heard. Your portrait and story will have their own place here and be shared across the project and social media.
Your portrait will also become part of something much bigger: hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women brought together in one vast collective artwork and, eventually, a book.