So you caged the bird, ‘cause it won‘t fly back
| Edition | Original Art |
|---|---|
| Sujet | Other |
| Technique | Painting |
| Height | 100 cm |
| Width | 230 cm |
| Length/Depth | 6.5 cm |
Medium:
Ink on canvas
Technique:
Hand-painted lace on canvas
Shipping:
The artwork will be shipped stretched on a stretcher frame – including a certificate of authenticity and the artist’s signature on the reverse.
Description:
This work forms part of my ‘Lace Pictures’ series – large-format ink works in which hand-painted lace patterns function not as decoration, but as feminist semiotics. Lace, traditionally coded as feminine, domestic and ornamental, becomes here the vehicle for a direct, confrontational language.
The text embedded in the pattern – ‘So, you caged the bird, ‘cause it won’t fly back’ – functions both as a provocation and a diagnosis. It speaks of the control mechanisms of patriarchal structures, which restrict women’s agency not through violence, but through the silent domestication of desire, ambition and freedom. The bird was not broken. It was caged. And once you recognise the cage, you can no longer deny it.
The clash between the delicacy of the lace and the sharpness of the text is a deliberate choice. Beauty is used as a trap, and the eye is drawn to the ornamental surface before the meaning strikes. This is the very logic that the work criticises.
In the tradition of Jenny Holzer’s feminist semiotics and Louise Bourgeois’s textile practice, Zota positions the decorative as genuinely political. As a space where femininity, power and resistance converge.
The work was part of the ‘Where is my mind’ exhibition at Galerie Obrist in Essen. Images from the opening are also on display.
Mara Zota
Mara Zota is an artist born in Sibiu, Romania
,and studied at the Essen Academy of Fine Arts in Markus Vater’s class.
“My practice operates at the intersection of post-feminist critique, material culture and the visual semiotics of constructed femininity. I work primarily with oil on canvas and mixed-media textile experiments, exploring how femininity functions not as an innate characteristic but as a culturally produced performance – one that is learnt, repeated and enforced through image, material and the gaze.
At the heart of my work is the figure of the Chrome Dollie, a series of archetypal avatars whose hyper-aestheticised surfaces conceal the ideological structures that give rise to them. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, these figures embody femininity as a quotation: as the repeated staging of cultural scripts that make the constructed appear natural. The chrome surface—reflective, impenetrable, seductive—functions simultaneously as armour and a trap. It deflects the gaze whilst simultaneously affirming its power.
The recurring presence of lace in my work introduces a second material register. Historically coded as feminine, domestic and decorative, lace is a material that requires extraordinary labour whilst appearing effortless. In feminist semiotics, following Laura Mulvey’s concept, such materials function as fetish objects—fragments that channel desire whilst concealing the conditions of their production. In my paintings and textile works, lace and chrome exist in deliberate collision: the ornamental meets the industrial, the intimate meets the impenetrable.
My more recent work extends this investigation into an experimental material practice. By scanning, manipulating and assembling textiles – lace, crochet, chain stitch, chrome-sprayed fabric – I explore how materials carry gendered meaning and how this meaning can be destabilised through the process.
Underlying
it all is the virgin-whore dichotomy, the fundamental binary through which Western patriarchal culture has historically organised and constrained female identity. My archetypal Chrome Dollies do not dissolve this binary. They multiply it, lay bare its mechanisms and reject its logic. Each archetype – The Good Girl, The Man-Eater, The Kawaii Doll, The Party Doll – occupies a different position within this constructed spectrum and reveals not individual character, but collective cultural projection.
My work offers no resolution. It offers recognition.”
Mara
has been part of the Studenten Kunstmarkt since February 2022.
2021
Applicant’s scholarship from the Essen University of the Arts
2022
SKM exhibition in Hamburg at stilwerk
2023 – May
Stroke Art Fair, Munich
2023 – July
“Schneeball – A Masked Ball as a Work of Art”
2023 – August
‘LabEurope’ – residency grant in Osnabrück
2023 – December
‘Graustufen’
2024 – January
‘4 Shades of Grey’
2024 – April
‘ArtArtist’
2025 - February
“Nature and Vitality” at Raum55
2025 - March–July
“Young Blood 4.0” at the Art Safari Museum, Bucharest
2025 - March–June
“Karyatiden” at Galerie
Gublia
2025 - June
“Where is my mind” at Galerie Obrist, Essen
, 2025 - July
“the only way out is through” at Neuer Kunstverein, Wuppertal
, 2025 - September
Academy Positions at Berlin Art Week
, 2025 – September:
Bachelor of Fine Arts with a grade of 1.0 from the Essen
University of Fine Arts
2026 – March
: Nomination for the “Junge Positionen NRW” sponsorship award
2026
Mara has been part of the Studenten Kunstmarkt since February 2022.
Other artworks by the artist
