Too Confrontational for Amsterdam
Unpacking Power, Privilege, and the Price of Silence
A series of watercolor and acrylic monotypes with photographic collage examining the intertwined systems of power, privilege, animal exploitation, and gender.
Installation Views
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Selected Works
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Too Confrontational for Amsterdam unpacks the uneasy, often unseen ties between animal rights and feminism, exploring power, privilege, gender, and the cost of silence. Created over a decade ago, the work has only grown more urgent as conversations about industrial animal agriculture increasingly encompass climate change, environmental justice, and public health alongside ethics.
The title comes from a meeting I had with a respected gallery in Amsterdam. They admired my work but ultimately declined to show it, telling me it was “too confrontational.” That moment stayed with me. It said everything. This is the confrontation we’re not supposed to have—about what we eat, what we wear, how we define power, who we dismiss, and whose pain we normalize.
This series presents satirical yet unsettling scenes where a “perfect” middle-class white woman consumes and controls people dressed as animals—figures who cower, scream, or resign themselves inside cages. Here, the familiar social order flips: the oppressor is also trapped within the systems that sustain her power, while those she dominates bear the scars.
These images challenge the patriarchal culture that reduces both women and animals to commodities, defined primarily by their usefulness to others. Both are conditioned to exist within systems that reward obedience, consumption, and control. Women, often valued in relation to men, share this constrained identity with animals, whose lives are dictated by their value as food, clothing, entertainment, or research. By merging human and animal forms, the work uses satire, horror, and absurdity to expose these overlapping structures of oppression while inviting viewers toward deeper empathy and reflection.
Rendered through watercolor and acrylic monotypes combined with photographic collage, these surreal scenes reveal the violence beneath everyday normalcy—the realities of industrial animal agriculture and the social systems that make it seem ordinary. What began as an exploration of feminism and animal rights now resonates equally within conversations about climate change, environmental justice, and our collective responsibility for the living world. These images don't ask for comfort. They ask for reckoning.
The title comes from a meeting I had with a respected gallery in Amsterdam. They admired my work but ultimately declined to show it, telling me it was “too confrontational.” That moment stayed with me. It said everything. This is the confrontation we’re not supposed to have—about what we eat, what we wear, how we define power, who we dismiss, and whose pain we normalize.
This series presents satirical yet unsettling scenes where a “perfect” middle-class white woman consumes and controls people dressed as animals—figures who cower, scream, or resign themselves inside cages. Here, the familiar social order flips: the oppressor is also trapped within the systems that sustain her power, while those she dominates bear the scars.
These images challenge the patriarchal culture that reduces both women and animals to commodities, defined primarily by their usefulness to others. Both are conditioned to exist within systems that reward obedience, consumption, and control. Women, often valued in relation to men, share this constrained identity with animals, whose lives are dictated by their value as food, clothing, entertainment, or research. By merging human and animal forms, the work uses satire, horror, and absurdity to expose these overlapping structures of oppression while inviting viewers toward deeper empathy and reflection.
Rendered through watercolor and acrylic monotypes combined with photographic collage, these surreal scenes reveal the violence beneath everyday normalcy—the realities of industrial animal agriculture and the social systems that make it seem ordinary. What began as an exploration of feminism and animal rights now resonates equally within conversations about climate change, environmental justice, and our collective responsibility for the living world. These images don't ask for comfort. They ask for reckoning.
