Dutch artist Handiedan pushes mixed-media collage to a higher level by digitally creating classic female pin-ups using ornamental components such as currencies, sheet music and her own cartoon drawings. Handiedan rebuilds these digital designs into multi-layered hand-cut collages that end up with a distinctive three-dimensional quality. Her pin-ups look like something between an orientally adorned femme fatale from a noir film, a sexually joyful pin-up from a 1950’s calendar and a tattooed rockabilly girl. Each work is a treasure trove of symbols, with a focus on cosmology, Eastern philosophy and sacred geometries.

Sandra Chevrier merges painting and collage in works that reflect upon the self-imposed limitations within our world and the underlying tragedy of oppressed female identity. In her series Cages, finely hand-painted portraits of women are masked with pages from comic books, symbolizing the struggle of having to uphold unrealistic expectations of beauty and perfection. By imposing these strict limitations, society is placing women in prisons of identity and asking them to become superheroes. In the greater body of her work, the images used within ‘cages’ range from scenes of conflict, triumph and defeat. Often focusing on the latter, the artist highlights the fragility of the superhero, their personal weaknesses and exposes the humanity within the superhuman.