“Everything we see hides another thing,” Belgian Surrealist René Magritte once remarked in an interview just three years before his death. “We always want to see what is hidden by what we see.” Ever the intellectual, Magritte was alluding to his most famous work, “Son of Man,” where he dared to plop a green apple squarely over a man’s face. It’s all very biblical—and unmistakably masculine, considering the title, subject, suit, and bowler hat.
It’s often said that history is written by the victors; nowhere does that sentiment ring truer than within the pages of art history texts, where women are frequently relegated to the role of passive, decorative objects or used to impart a dull moral lesson. Portland-based photographer Grace Weston sees right through the bullshit. "I came of age in the ’60s, after that entire World War II period when women entered the workforce because the men were off at war,” she recalls. “Then, there was a push to return women back to the kitchen and the home.”
In Reclaiming the Muse, an ongoing body of work that could “literally go on forever,” Grace channels the subversive suburban housewife aesthetic into miniature scenes that she stages and photographs. Her sets, inspired by art history, are filled with dolls and props that she sources, alters, or fabricates from scratch before illuminating and capturing them on camera.
Meticulously crafted works like “Divine Intervention” and “Ceci N’est Pas un Homme” serve as alternate versions of famous artworks centered on male figures; the former references Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” while the latter cleverly inverts the symbolism of Magritte’s “Son of Man” by substituting the apple with a ripe papaya. In “Susanna and the Elders,” the plucky biblical heroine turns the tables on her voyeuristic neighbors, dousing them with a hose for disrupting her privacy; meanwhile, in “Judy and Holofernes,” the protagonist shrugs off her laundry duties, clearly in no mood to clean up all that blood.
Grace reimagines these iconic compositions by placing women at the forefront, inviting viewers to reconsider the historical context and significance of these masterpieces. “The viewer will recognize the tales of Leda and the Swan, Susanna and the Elders, and Shakespeare’s Ophelia, but all delivered with a twist,” says Grace. “Many of the old tales are fiction; it is far past time for the retelling.”
Grace Weston’s work appears in our October 2025 exhibition, Witchy Women. View the exhibition via the button below, then scroll through to read our interview with Grace.
In Today’s Q+Art Interview…
Grace Weston unpacks the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders, shares her decision to include a trans doll in one of her minatures, and explains the concept behind her next series, Resistance: Women of a Certain Rage.
What’s your research process like, and how do you approach the stories and myths surrounding iconic figures in art, such as Venus?
Grace Weston: The stories are just wild. They're great. It was such an art education for me to go deeper into all of these Venuses, the Venus on the Half Shell, as Botticelli's Venus. It's been a little while since I read the mythology, but Kronos is the son of Uranus, and castrated him and threw his penis into the ocean. And the foam from his castrated penis formed Venus. Like, holy shit.
Tell me about ‘The Bird.’ What famous artwork does that photograph reference?
GW: That's a painting by Jacques-Louis David, “Napoleon Crossing the Alps.” Initially, I used to create my own titles for these works, but now I've started using “After” followed by the artist’s name and work of art because not all of them are that well known.
It's Napoleon on this white stallion on its hind legs, and he's got his giant red cape flowing behind him. So it's very glorious, when in truth, he was on a mule. It was winter. He was very downtrodden.
There have been a lot of reinterpretations of Judith and Holofernes over the centuries. It's interesting that yours is not a direct interpretation. You have to rely on the title a bit.
GW: Yeah, you do have to rely on the title. A lot of people look at it, and they don't notice the bleeding head on the floor. And the cigarettes are an amazing prop. I was never a smoker, and I don't like smoking, but I love cigarettes as a prop. They can help convey so much attitude.
What challenges do you face when creating your miniatures?
GW: Initially, I didn't want to work with Barbies at all, because they were too recognizable. Quite a few of the dolls are a smaller half-size, half the size of Barbie. The one in “Venus” and “Divine Intervention,” that's a five-inch doll. Even “The Bird,” that's a small doll. It's tough with the clothes, because I didn't grow up sewing, and you can't find a lot of clothes that size. So I do struggle to make those outfits. Sometimes if they're naked, that's good.
Now I'm at a point where I'm showing the faces more, like I did in “A Modern Family.” I take the paint off, and now I'm starting to redo the faces with watercolor pencils, which is really challenging at that size. So, in “A Modern Family,” I replaced the faces. I wanted to have a trans doll, so I removed the face on both of those dolls. Their faces have been drawn by me.
Can you unpack the story of Susanna and the Elders? In your version, Susanna is spraying two Peeping Toms with a hose.
GW: Susanna is cowering and just being creeped out by these guys in all the paintings I've seen of Susanna and the Elders, at least the older ones. It's actually one of the few biblical stories where the woman won because the elders’ stories didn't match when they said that they witnessed her committing adultery, which was ironic. They were trying to get her to commit adultery with them! Anyway, they separated the guys, who told different stories, so they were exposed as liars. Her reputation was not ruined by them. I wanted to show her fighting back. Fuck you guys.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
GW: I'm going to call my next series Resistance: Women of a Certain Rage. There are so many women over the years who have resisted all over the world. There’s a recent movie with Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, the photographer. She did surrealist and fashion work, and that's how I mostly knew her. But the movie Lee is all about her as a war correspondent in World War II.
She and David Sherman were photojournalists who ended up documenting Dachau and Buchenwald. Nobody had seen those pictures. Nobody knew what was going on in those concentration camps. So there's a very famous photograph of her in Hitler's bathtub. The mud on the rug is from Buchenwald. I mean, it's just a wild image.
The Russians were advancing, and Hitler was in his bunker, so his apartment was abandoned. Lee and David had been at Buchenwald. They hadn't had showers in forever, so she decided to take a bath. And I guess she thought this would be a great “fuck you” picture. That was the very same day Hitler killed himself in his bunker.
So, I restaged the Lee Miller shot.
Grace Weston: Website | Instagram | Witchy Women
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All images published with permission of Grace Weston; featured image: “Ceci N’est Pas un Homme.”