COCKS AND HENS

This series of large-scale, head-and-shoulders chicken portraits engages with the semiotic instability of language and image. Each photograph is paired with a single word—cock, chick, fowl, dame—terms that are both literal descriptors and culturally loaded signifiers. These textual interventions highlight the slippage between denotation and connotation, drawing attention to how language constructs meaning, identity, and power.

By isolating the subject against a black background and presenting it with the formal cues of traditional portraiture, the work imposes a sense of gravitas on an otherwise familiar, often overlooked animal. The chickens become both subjects and symbols—figures onto which cultural anxieties, stereotypes, and desires are projected.

Rooted in the legacy of Barthes and visual culture theory, the project interrogates the tension between image and word, surface and subtext. It invites viewers to confront not only the subject of the portrait but the language that frames it—and, by extension, the cultural narratives we inherit and perpetuate.