Briana McCarthy

My artistic practice expresses personal grief, explores identity, and critically interrogates Western traditions and societal expectations around womanhood and bereavement. I am drawn to how femininity and women’s power—rooted in nature, intuition, and embodied knowledge—have historically been feared, dismissed, or misrepresented.

I seek sovereignty from accepted narratives—not only around grief, but also around how women are expected to express, endure, and create. I champion the feminine individual, shaped and strengthened through cycles of loss, transformation, and reclamation.

Heavily ritualistic, my practice engages materiality, repetitive processes, and reflective writing. Poetry and making exist symbiotically: poetry clarifies emotions and guides the work, while creation becomes meditative, letting intuition unravel tangles and feed the poetry.

I use occult, folk, and mythical imagery to convey the tension between societal expectation and personal need, while honoring women’s ancestral knowledge and resistance. These symbols structure my metaphors, claim a lineage of women’s wisdom, and allow material itself to function as metaphor.

Emphasizing natural forms and bodily shapes, my work reclaims female power and explores narratives imposed on women. It remains confrontation and sanctuary, mourning and reawakening, holding grief, identity, and feminine power as co-conspirators while creating space for connection, meaning, and healing.