A LETTER FROM JOAN:
My dear,
Images care a great deal about their reputation for independence. It makes me suspicious.
I'm especially wary of those that seem to speak for themselves, since they rarely choose their own words.
Sometimes, all it takes is a few convinced hands to assign a role to an icon... then a doctrine to those who look at it.
These days, I linger a little longer over images. They almost always end up revealing who is really speaking through them.
With all my affection... and a saintly suspicion.
Joan
At first glance, the image borrows the features of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Surrounded by the roses traditionally associated with her, she wears a peaceful expression marked by gentleness and contemplation. Yet the arms emerging from beneath her habit are clearly not her own. They end in masculine hands brandishing a semi-automatic weapon. A tension immediately arises between the serenity of her face and the violence emerging from beneath her habit.
The hands are more unsettling than the weapon they hold. They could just as easily disappear beneath the habit, allowing the saint to regain her reassuring stillness. They could just as easily lend her different gestures, different words, different causes. The figure now seems animated by a will that may not be her own. What first unsettled us through its violence gradually reveals another kind of power: the power to shape images, set them in motion and, when persuasion is no longer enough, resort to coercion.
The choice of this iconography is anything but incidental. Over the centuries, gentleness, piety, purity and virginity have often been used to embody certain ideals of femininity. More than these values themselves, Joan Seed is interested in the figures called upon to embody them. As Roland Barthes observed in Mythologies, some representations eventually come to seem so natural that we forget they are also cultural constructions. Their history fades behind the sense of inevitability they appear to embody.
Semi-Automatic Virgin does not seek to discredit faith or condemn any particular tradition. Instead, it invites us to look differently at the figures to which a society grants symbolic authority. Behind the most serene faces, hands are sometimes at work, capable of shaping a narrative just as easily as imposing one. Joan Seed simply lifts the veil on these images, reminding us that the most familiar figures are also constructions, shaped by history, imagination and power.
An image never stops being interpreted once it has been created. Reproduced, quoted, adapted or reappropriated, it can acquire new meanings while also carrying forward readings that no longer correspond to the context in which it circulates. This fluidity lies at the heart of religious iconography, visual culture and the symbolic power of images.
Art history, retro collage, image appropriation and many contemporary artistic practices demonstrate how religious, political and cultural symbols remain open to reinterpretation. Semi-Automatic Virgin belongs to this broader reflection on iconography, cultural memory and the evolving life of images—not only what they show, but also what others make them say.-Louis Morency
For acquisitions, inquiries, and commissions: joan@joanseed.ca
© 2026 Joan Seed. All rights reserved. This artwork and its images may not be reproduced, copied, distributed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the artist.
A LETTER FROM JOAN:
My dear,
Images care a great deal about their reputation for independence. It makes me suspicious.
I'm especially wary of those that seem to speak for themselves, since they rarely choose their own words.
Sometimes, all it takes is a few convinced hands to assign a role to an icon... then a doctrine to those who look at it.
These days, I linger a little longer over images. They almost always end up revealing who is really speaking through them.
With all my affection... and a saintly suspicion.
Joan
At first glance, the image borrows the features of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Surrounded by the roses traditionally associated with her, she wears a peaceful expression marked by gentleness and contemplation. Yet the arms emerging from beneath her habit are clearly not her own. They end in masculine hands brandishing a semi-automatic weapon. A tension immediately arises between the serenity of her face and the violence emerging from beneath her habit.
The hands are more unsettling than the weapon they hold. They could just as easily disappear beneath the habit, allowing the saint to regain her reassuring stillness. They could just as easily lend her different gestures, different words, different causes. The figure now seems animated by a will that may not be her own. What first unsettled us through its violence gradually reveals another kind of power: the power to shape images, set them in motion and, when persuasion is no longer enough, resort to coercion.
The choice of this iconography is anything but incidental. Over the centuries, gentleness, piety, purity and virginity have often been used to embody certain ideals of femininity. More than these values themselves, Joan Seed is interested in the figures called upon to embody them. As Roland Barthes observed in Mythologies, some representations eventually come to seem so natural that we forget they are also cultural constructions. Their history fades behind the sense of inevitability they appear to embody.
Semi-Automatic Virgin does not seek to discredit faith or condemn any particular tradition. Instead, it invites us to look differently at the figures to which a society grants symbolic authority. Behind the most serene faces, hands are sometimes at work, capable of shaping a narrative just as easily as imposing one. Joan Seed simply lifts the veil on these images, reminding us that the most familiar figures are also constructions, shaped by history, imagination and power.
An image never stops being interpreted once it has been created. Reproduced, quoted, adapted or reappropriated, it can acquire new meanings while also carrying forward readings that no longer correspond to the context in which it circulates. This fluidity lies at the heart of religious iconography, visual culture and the symbolic power of images.
Art history, retro collage, image appropriation and many contemporary artistic practices demonstrate how religious, political and cultural symbols remain open to reinterpretation. Semi-Automatic Virgin belongs to this broader reflection on iconography, cultural memory and the evolving life of images—not only what they show, but also what others make them say.-Louis Morency
For acquisitions, inquiries, and commissions: joan@joanseed.ca
© 2026 Joan Seed. All rights reserved. This artwork and its images may not be reproduced, copied, distributed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the artist.
