Duessa

Biography

Duessa (b. 1997, Boston, Massachusetts) is an interdisciplinary artist with a passion for ecofeminism and fantasy narratives. With a background in theater production and English literature, she employs her penchant for storytelling to conjure fantastical worlds that explore the utopian potential of queerness. She crafts these stories in graphic arts, oil painting, soft sculpture, and ritual guides. Her name derives from the much-maligned witch, Duessa, of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. She will graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University with her Masters of Fine Arts in May of 2023.  

Artist Statement

Within my tarot deck and oil paintings, I craft a world called Duessa. Sensual, joyous, and unapologetically sex-positive, Duessa conjures the utopian potentialities hidden in queerness.  

My tarot deck depicts sex-positivity in all its post-colonial, post-structural glory. Duessa’s otherworldly denizens shimmer in a lush, electric palette. They cavort in idyllic landscapes, some gilded by sunshine, others limned in moonlight. Their everyday carnal delight and systems of relating to each other take on profound symbolic meaning. The Rider-Waite deck’s Major Arcana is my guide for narrative and imagery. However, I depart from the Rider-Waite deck’s symbolism in order to queer its imagery and infuse it with my own spiritual worldview. As both art objects or artifacts in a personal ritual practice, these tarot cards expand what it means to determine one's own story, especially for those living queer subjectivities.  

My paintings continue to explore the glimmering, corporeal world of Duessa. Direct, swirling brush strokes and the tactility of oil paint illuminate the arrestingly erotic moments one might stumble upon while wandering Duessa’s forests and fields. Dreamy pastels and glowing pink underpaintings draw the viewer into this Dionysiac world. These creatures, maybe gods, maybe mythic heroes, exist outside of a settler-colonial conception of binary gender and beauty. These sensual rituals take place in natural settings, demonstrating the folk’s devotion to and reverence for nature.  

I delved into Duessa because I looked around and found my own planet severely lacking. As I fight to survive a culture that remains hostile to queerness, femininity, and eroticism, I am determined to write my own utopian fantasy. I use the power of imagination to transport myself away from 21st century North America, and through escapism and my own creative force, bring some of Duessa’s transformative power home with me.