Ascension is a series of mixed-media soft sculptures and immersive installations that explore the return of the feminine to greater balance within our societal structures and our psychic spaces.

As history tells us, patriarchal systems have dominated many Western societies since the advent of agriculture. This has contributed to imbalances in our relationships with nature, with one another, with labour, emotion, family, violence, and gender expression. The work emerges from a desire to imagine what healing these imbalances might look like.

Throughout the world, stories, histories, and cultural traditions describe matriarchal and egalitarian societies where diverse gender expressions were honoured and respected. As PBS Independent Lens notes, “Hundreds of distinct societies around the globe have their own long-established traditions for third, fourth, fifth, or more genders.” These histories remind us that rigid binaries and hierarchies are neither universal nor inevitable.

The sculptures depict a collective of spiritual beings. Simultaneously phallic and feminine, they resist fixed definitions and embody transformation, fluidity, and possibility. They emerge as a visual representation of a shift in consciousness—a rising through the earth and into the world. They are protectors, guides, witnesses, and healers. Together, they form a gathering of feminine energy that arrives in response to the growing divisions, inequities, and gender-based hostility of our time.

Constructed from reclaimed textiles, glittering jewels, beads, found objects, and vibrant materials, the sculptures merge softness with strength. Deep reds, radiant purples, shimmering golds and silvers, floral references, and organic forms evoke connections to land, water, growth, and renewal. Suspended in large numbers, they become an army of collective care and resilience, each figure contributing to a larger vision of transformation.

Ascension presents an optimistic response to the backlash against gender equity and the increasing polarization shaping contemporary life. Rather than focusing on conflict, the work imagines futures grounded in reciprocity, interdependence, and collective power. These goddess forms remind us that another way of being is possible. They offer hope that we are witnessing not the end of progress, but the final resistance of an imbalanced system before a return toward greater harmony and balance.