Why does the artist not work under her birth name?

Why is the first body of work called EPIC FURY?

EPIC FURY captures the collision at the heart of She Who Bites: beauty, seduction, spectacle and excess colliding with anger, violence, loss of control and damage.

The title is an appropriation of Operation Epic Fury, the name given to the U.S. military operation against Iran launched in 2026. Taken from the language of political and military power and placed within a feminist artistic context, the words are made to do something entirely different.

EPIC FURY is not angry feminist art. It comes from a feminism that does not need to defend itself, prove its strength or argue for its equality. That is already the starting point. From there, ambiguity becomes possible. Beauty, fashion, glamour, sex, pop culture, desire and femininity can exist alongside power, violence, vulnerability and contradiction, without ever having to justify their presence. You can bite. You can seduce. You can submit. You can dominate. You can contradict yourself.

EPIC FURY is therefore more than the title of a body of work. It embodies an artistic principle of She Who Bites: the freedom to let seemingly contradictory forces exist within the same image, without resolving them into a comfortable conclusion.

How do politics and current events enter the work?

Politics and current events often enter the work of She Who Bites, but they rarely define its final meaning. A political event, public figure or social development may act as a trigger, becoming part of a much larger associative field of history, personal experience, cultural imagery, gender, power and human behaviour.

Works such as Bite Not Suck and Maryam and Maryam Installed emerge from specific contemporary realities, but move beyond them. They explore the larger structures beneath the immediate event: how power is organised and maintained, who gets to define social and moral norms, how gender shapes access to freedom and autonomy, how systems and conflicts are inherited across generations, and what might happen when established structures of power are replaced by different forms of leadership, care and collective responsibility.

Rather than illustrating a political position or reducing complex issues to a single message, the works use the present as an entry point into questions that extend beyond it.

The political moment may be the point of departure. It is not necessarily the destination.

Why is She Who Bites considered feminist art?

The work engages with themes of gender inequality, sexual violence, and the impact of rigid socio-economic and cultural structures within a male-dominated society. It challenges these systems and examines how power operates through them, particularly in relation to bodies and identities coded as feminine. Rather than offering fixed positions, the work invites critical reflection on how these dynamics persist and shape lived experience.

Does the artist identify as a feminist?

The artist advocates for equal rights and opportunities for all, including those who embody traits traditionally associated with femininity. In that sense, feminism provides an important context for understanding her work. Her practice engages with themes central to feminist discourse, including representation, agency and structural inequality, as well as femininity, sexuality, violence, power, beauty, ownership and autonomy.

At the same time, She Who Bites questions feminism from within feminism. If feminism is about freedom and equality, what happens when feminism itself starts prescribing what a liberated woman should look like?

Rather than positioning herself within a fixed definition of feminism, She Who Bites allows these contradictions to remain open. Feminism is not a conclusion imposed on the work, but a lens through which some of its questions can be explored.

Does the artist hate men?

No. The artist does not hate men, nor does her work advocate harm against them. The elements in her work are symbolic and metaphorical. They are forms of artistic expression and should not be interpreted literally.

Her work critiques a system historically shaped by male-dominated power structures, that continues to privilege certain traits while marginalising others, often associated with femininity. The differences between individuals are far greater than the average differences between men and women. Yet much of our society is still built on these generalized assumptions, placing men in positions of power and others at a disadvantage.

She believes it is also the responsibility of men to become aware of these dynamics and to actively contribute to change, change that ultimately benefits everyone.

What does The Beautifully Uncomfortable mean?

At first, The Beautifully Uncomfortable may sound like a description of the work’s aesthetic: beautiful, yet unsettling. But it describes a much larger territory within She Who Bites. We have a tendency to categorise: beautiful or ugly, good or bad, victim or perpetrator, empowering or submissive, erotic or violent, acceptable or unacceptable. She Who Bites deliberately disrupts those divisions.

Within the work, seemingly contradictory things are allowed to exist at the same time. An image can be violent and seductive. A woman can be powerful and submissive. Sexuality can be liberating and destructive. Beauty can be superficial and meaningful. Vulnerability can exist alongside power.

This is also why She Who Bites is more interested in agency than conventional ideas of empowerment. Empowerment increasingly comes with its own image of what strength and liberation are supposed to look like. Agency is less comfortable: I choose, even when that choice contradicts what others believe freedom, strength or femininity should look like.

The Beautifully Uncomfortable is the space where those contradictions are allowed to exist without being resolved. The work does not decide which side is the right one. It allows both to remain.

What is the artist’s objective with this body of work?

The work does not stem from a predefined objective, but from an intuitive process shaped by a strong sensitivity to injustice.

She Who Bites’s work exists at the intersection of personal history and collective urgency. It transforms lived experience into visual language that confronts, questions, and connects. She does not aim to provide answers, but to create space; space for discomfort, recognition, dialogue, and change.

Any meaning or impact arises in the encounter between the work and the viewer, rather than being imposed.

What principles underpin the artistic process?

How are the works created?

Digital

The process begins digitally. Working as a human AI, She Who Bites deliberately and intuitively collects images, texts, symbols and pixels from the online underbelly of society. Through digital painting and drawing, these fragments are reconstructed into complex compositions built with an almost obsessive level of control and precision. The digital works exist as autonomous artworks. They are not sketches or preliminary stages for something more ‘real’.

Physical

When translated into physical form, the digital work is sublimated onto large-scale canvas. Scale, materiality and physical presence fundamentally change how the work exists. The sublimation process can also introduce traces, irregularities and damage that cannot be fully controlled. Rather than erasing, hiding or correcting them, She Who Bites responds to these disruptions with oil paint, allowing them to become part of the physical work.

This tension between digital precision and physical unpredictability reflects one of She Who Bites’ underlying principles: Damage Without Judgement. Damage is neither treated as failure nor romanticised as something inherently beautiful or transformative. It is allowed to exist without judgement.

Immersive

Experience allows the work to move beyond the boundaries of the fixed image. Through movement, time, sound, space, interaction or immersion, elements of the work can be activated, isolated, enlarged or brought to life. Rather than reproducing the original artwork, these experiences open up new ways of entering its visual universe.

Digital, physical and experience are therefore not successive stages towards a final work, but different manifestations of the same oeuvre, each with its own possibilities.

Where does the source material come from and how is it used?

The work is rooted in the collection and transformation of visual fragments drawn from the digital undercurrent of contemporary culture, including imagery, graphics, and references to widely circulated media and public figures.

Where possible, material is licensed or used with permission. In other cases, it is incorporated within a highly transformative artistic process in which context, meaning, and composition are fundamentally altered. Individual elements are never presented in isolation, but embedded within layered compositions that generate new narratives.

All material is used within the context of artistic expression. Rights holders with questions or concerns are invited to get in touch; all requests are reviewed with care.

Under which artistic movement or style can She Who Bites be placed?

The work resists clear categorisation within a single artistic movement. It draws on elements of surrealism in its dreamlike logic, symbolic density, and the merging of the real and the imagined.

At the same time, it engages with visual strategies associated with pop art and contemporary image culture, including bold aesthetics, mediated imagery, and references to digitally constructed realities.

Situated within a broader field of contemporary figurative and conceptual practices, the work operates at the intersection of these influences. Rather than aligning with a defined category, it reflects a hybrid visual language that responds to current questions around power, identity, representation, and the circulation of images.

Do the symbols in the artworks have specific meanings?

Yes. Many of the symbols within the works carry personal, historical, cultural, political or social associations. But She Who Bites deliberately avoids providing a fixed dictionary of meanings. Symbols shift when placed in new contexts, collide with other imagery and are interpreted through the experiences of the person looking at them. The artist’s original association is therefore only one possible layer of meaning, not the definitive interpretation.

The work is meant to be experienced, not decoded. At the same time, it engages with visual strategies associated with pop art and contemporary image culture, including bold aesthetics, mediated imagery, and references to digitally constructed realities.

Situated within a broader field of contemporary figurative and conceptual practices, the work operates at the intersection of these influences. Rather than aligning with a defined category, it reflects a hybrid visual language that responds to current questions around power, identity, representation, and the circulation of images.

Why are female figures central to the work?

Female figures function as both subjects and carriers of meaning within the work. They are created to examine how femininity has been constructed, represented, and controlled within broader cultural and historical contexts.

What do ‘angels’ and ‘devils’ represent in the works of She Who Bites?

Throughout her work, She Who Bites portrays figures as angels or devils. These are not moral or religious symbols of good and evil, but represent an alternative perspective on human nature. Within this framework, individuals are not neutral at birth. Some are born as ‘angels,’ others as ‘devils.’

Devils are not evil. They are born carrying the weight, memory, and unresolved experiences of those who came before them. What they embody is not personal, but inherited; a deeply rooted awareness of life, existence, and the complexity of the world. This weight can manifest as sensitivity, intensity, or a sense of pain that is difficult to locate or explain.

Angels, in contrast, are born without this inherited burden. Their perspective is more open, less conditioned, allowing them to see possibility where none seems to exist, and to move through the world with fewer internal barriers. This can make them more free, but also more naïve.

Devils may be better prepared for the realities and challenges of life, while angels move with a lightness that resists its weight. Neither state is superior. Both are necessary. Together, they create balance, shaping how individuals experience vulnerability, power, and survival. This duality runs throughout the work of She Who Bites, not as judgment, but as a lens through which human behaviour, experiences, and existence can be understood.

Why does blood appear as a recurring element in the work?

Blood functions as a layered and symbolic element within the artist’s visual language. It can be read as a trace of impact, of contact, rupture, or transformation, rather than as a literal depiction of violence.

At the same time, blood carries strong cultural and physical associations. It relates to the body, to vulnerability and mortality, but also to creation and life. In this sense, it can evoke specifically gendered experiences, such as menstruation and childbirth.

Menstruation, in particular, has historically been framed as something impure, shameful, or to be concealed. The work resists this framing. It repositions blood not as something to hide, but as an inherent and generative force, an integral part of how life begins and continues.

Its presence also introduces tension. It unsettles idealised or harmonious representations, revealing what is often excluded or softened in dominant narratives. More broadly, it may resonate with the ongoing presence of violence and conflict in the world.

Rather than pointing to a single meaning, blood operates as an open signifier, inviting interpretation while holding multiple, sometimes contradictory associations at once.

Why does the work combine beauty and violence?

The work operates within the tension between attraction and discomfort. Visual elements associated with beauty, luxury, and desire are deliberately combined with references to violence, control, and power. This contrast reflects how these forces often coexist within contemporary culture, where aesthetics can obscure, soften, or even normalize underlying structures of aggression and dominance. Rather than resolving this tension, the work sustains it, allowing both to remain present simultaneously.

Why does the artist combine aesthetic beauty with challenging subject matter?

The artist intentionally employs aesthetic appeal, such as colour, composition, and detail, as an entry point. The hyperrealistic and surreal visual language, combined with elements of pop art, resonates particularly strongly with younger audiences. It feels both familiar and refreshing to a generation accustomed to digitally manipulated imagery and visual culture shaped by social media.

At the same time, this aesthetic approach introduces a sense of ambiguity, raising questions such as: is this glamorous or violent? Beautiful or monstrous? This visual accessibility invites engagement, after which more complex and layered themes gradually emerge. The resulting tension reflects how systems of power and inequality often operate beneath seemingly neutral or attractive surfaces.

The artist’s work is often interpreted as sexual or linked to sexuality. Is that intentional?

Is the work intended to provoke or shock?

Why is there such a high level of detail in the work?

The density of detail reflects the artist’s autistic mode of perception, in which experience is often layered, simultaneous, and less governed by hierarchy. The intricate visual language emerges intuitively from this way of seeing, rather than from a purely formal strategy. It results in compositions where information, structure, and detail coexist without clear prioritisation, creating a sense of intensity and perceptual depth.

What is the significance of detail in the work?

Detail is a fundamental component of the artist’s visual language. It encourages sustained attention and active viewing, allowing meaning to unfold gradually. Many elements operate symbolically, requiring close observation and interpretation.

To what extent is the work autobiographical?

While the artist’s lived experience informs her perspective, the work is not autobiographical in a literal sense. It operates on a conceptual level, addressing systemic and collective issues rather than individual narrative alone.