Senior Thesis | My Site

Senior Thesis Project Statement:

This two-piece installation examines the “monstrous feminine” as theorized by Barbara Creed as a site of power, reclamation, and metamorphosis. Across both works, the female body is rendered in states of becoming with themes of hybridity and transformation, disrupting the expectation of women to appear passive, contained, and controlled.

Graphite on paper, mounted on found wood (top), mounted on cardboard wall divider (bottom), displayed with fabric, plaster and cement hand molds.

In Monstrous Daughter, Raptorial Cradle (2025), this drawing depicts my child self emerging from a hawk that ultimately reflects the untamed power suppressed within womanhood (untamed feminine). My child self emerging from the heart of the hawk is an act of transformation. It is a moment of self genesis that combines innocence with primal. This young girl, who has yet to come into womanhood, must find strength in self-preservation. She represents the self in the “before” state. There is emphasis on her overall smallness in contrast to the engulfing bird; the little girl must claim this overwhelming power (her “monstrous” side) in order to become a self-possessed woman. In patriarchal traditions, women are often depicted as objects of the gaze. The hawk reverses that relation. As a bird of prey, it symbolizes the power of the gaze itself.

In Monstrous Feminine, She is Becoming (2025), the drawing visualizes metamorphosis as an act of reclamation of power. The merging of human flesh with the head and wings of a vulture invokes both decay and renewal. The vulture is traditionally seen as ominous, but the vulture is also a purifier. It is a creature that transforms death into sustenance. By embodying the vulture, the figure reclaims the abject as sacred. The figure’s poses, twisting, expansive forward reaching, all defy containment. The hybrid form, fusing flesh with organic matter, becomes a metaphor for agency itself. She is a body in motion, in flux. She is not succumbing to the monstrous, but becoming through it. Rather than being consumed by her “monstrous” transformation, she becomes the one who sees, tracks, and acts.

Rooted in Barbara Creed’s theory of the monstrous feminine, this work reclaims female monstrosity as a site of agency and transformation rather than fear. Through the fusion of the female body, vulture, and serpent, the figure embodies cycles of decay and regeneration, asserting the feminine body as a locus of self-authorship and metamorphosis.

Together, the works reclaim this monstrosity, and by embracing what Creed identifies as culturally feared feminine power, these works reimagine the monstrous not as deviation or as something horrific, but as liberation and reclamation of power in femininity. This installation was created with the support of the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center LIFT Grant.

Macyn Metten