Nicole Skibola

This is an older body of work from a series that I named Domina Oriens. This combination of monotypes, woodblock prints, semi paintings and graphite drawings explore the ways in which society controls over the female body past and present. This work reimagines the voices of women from 16th and 17th century witch hunts alongside poems that I wrote (some excerpts below). I unearthed it recently and I still love it.

6. The book of secrets
I drop the flask of herbs, black hellebore
Through a crack in the shutters 
The scorpion creeps across the night sky
But Orion’s belt casts tiny searchlights   

As our fingers brush in the darkness, 
What of the great fires, Artemis? [they ask me] 
The body is our precept [I say] 

But reason is the great inquisitor
And the hammer falls anyway.