Vanessa Baird

The nightmare of patriarchy is a repeating pattern, as one sees in Vanessa Baird's paintings and drawings. Fully taking over a claustrophobic former domestic space, she covers its walls with watercolors depicting playful and dark scenes of family life gone wrong. Showing how the public and the private intertwine, Baird sketches out a complex set of feelings and experiences, defying traditional ideals of female beauty and grace while drawing upon a rich collection of mass cultural and art historical references.

Hallucinatory visions of a patriarchal family appear like a distorted and spooky fairy tale. This imaginary space is inhabited not only by abusive relatives but also by archetypal public figures, birthed through “asshole deliveries” in a male-only world. The work’s title, Erected Family, is a phallic pun, referring to a domesticity supposedly ruled by rigid Christian morals but constantly disintegrating into physical and mental violence.

Vanessa Baird (1963, Oslo, Norway) is an artist known for her works on paper, which range from large-scale murals to intimate drawings. Her painterly and graphic work depicts domestic life intertwined with personal, social, and political themes. Baird is represented in the British Museum’s Prints and Drawing Collection, among others, and her work has been shown at institutions such as Museum De Reede, Antwerp; Kunsthall Stavanger; Drawing Room, London; Kode, Bergen; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Trondheim Kunstmuseum; Göteborgs konstmuseum; and Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo. She lives in Oslo.