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Arts + Human Rights Research Award 2026 | Sandra Cavanagh
th_Eroses has recently had the opportunity to interview Sandra Cavanagh for the second installment of our series, the Arts + Human Rights Research Award Series. This initiative illuminates the work of artists who are engaged in meaningful artistic and/or literary research into the critical issues of our times. Sandra is a New York-based painter whose work explores cultural mythologies and symbols, often through repeated motifs or representations of a subject. Themes such as the act of witnessing violence and human aberrance, the loss of innocence for the witness, the brutality of war, and the corporeality of the human and animal form emerge across her work. Sandra is also involved with the New York Society of Women Artists. In the following interview, we discuss mythology, the nature of womanhood, downfall and grace, the role of art in society, and Sandra's artistic journey and process, among other topics. We are grateful to have the opportunity to highlight this work and to share Sandra's reflections and insights in the following interview.
image: Self, June. 2025. Oil on canvas. 112 x 132 cm; 44 x 52 in
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
You can find Sandra online at: SandraCavanagh.com | Instagram: @sandra_cavanagh_artista
Interview - Sandra Cavanagh
th_Eroses: I am recently viewing the world through the lens of the Oedipal v. the Anti-Oedipal, having lately been reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus. Their text is a polemic against the Lacanian order of the symbolic, and a celebration of quasi-formless flows, such as that of the pre-organism within an egg, or of the anarchical, passionate stream of a Henry Miller text. In this text, they also explore the radical, even revolutionary, quality of desire.
"[...] ...sexuality and love [...] dream instead of wide open spaces and cause strange flows to circulate that do not let themselves be stocked within an established order. Desire does not want revolution, it is revolutionary in its own right, as though involuntarily, by wanting what it wants." - Deleuze / Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
I’m interested in your views on symbolism, narrative structure, and desire. In some of your work, it seems that the repetition of a symbolic image, such as the bride (the transformation from woman into bride being, in cultural iconography, the moment at which an individual woman transcends her individuality to become a symbol of the Ur form of womanhood), or of Las Perras, the dogs, becomes like a rhythmic incantation through which the image breaks down the existing, fraught cultural mythology that surrounds it. For example, one errant, corporeal, lustful bride may be the representation of an individual, ‘deviant’ woman- whereas the repetition of the bride motif across multiple drawings presents a state of being, or an existential condition, in which the artistic subject of the bride, in her corporeality, becomes farcically at odds with the cultural mythology of the bride, the icon breaking down like a wave dissipating against a stone. Could you talk a bit about repetition and cultural symbols, about their purpose, and about your work’s relationship to them?
images (left to right): 1) Dressing The Bride, The Dressing Room 3. 2024. Pen and ink on paper. 36 x 28 cm; 14 x 11 in
2) Dressing the Bride, The Seamstress. 2024. Pen and ink on paper. 36 x 28 cm; 14 x 11 in
3) Dressing The Bride, The Dressing Room 4. 2024. Pen and ink on paper. 28 x 36 cm; 11 x 14 in
4) Dressing The Bride, Danaë and The Lascivious God 2. 2024. Pen and ink on paper. 36 x 28 cm; 14 x 11 in
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
Sandra: My answer has to come down to process. The signalling of a cultural symbol and its uses is followed by deconstruction and elaboration into something communicable that may raise some degree of public understanding. For the most part, these symbols operate pretty efficiently without their target’s awareness. Alongside this is the opportunity they afford an artist like me, interested in the human experience and persistent historical narratives, to challenge previous interpretation or lack of, with a singular approach, a new aesthetic. A good example lies in the many depictions of poor old Danaë, mostly shown in some version of erotic ecstasy by male artists who completely elide the fact of her betrayal and rape. We might offer some questions, is Danaë the quintessential bride in most traditions, why are we still being brides, and can we imbue the bride with agency? We constantly talk about misogyny, thank goodness for that, and yet much of its cultural underpinning is quite firmly in place and largely ignored. Now I’m getting rather personal.
I use repetition as a method to develop a concept, once started it runs to exhaustion. A cultural symbol becomes a subject to work with. Both will produce a variant set of pictorial and conceptual symbols, and drive the meaning through.
th_Eroses: Your work has Christian or Catholic motifs (for example, the Garden of Eden, which it gestures toward sincere engagement with the concept of, or more specifically with the concept of the loss of, and the bride, which it seems to deconstruct). However, it also seems to shimmer with threads of other forms of spiritual awareness, through the symbolism of animals, the theogeny the ancient gods, and the representation of the rape of Gaea. Could you talk a bit about spiritual or religious influences on your work, and how spiritual or religious traditions shape your worldview and/or conceptions of utopia, salvation, and/or human ethics?
Sandra: I mostly consider religions as mythologies within our multiple cultures rather than belief systems I can adhere to. In every case they’re in service of a certain hierarchical order, and of some measure of psychological comfort and consolation to our anxious minds.
As to specifics, my relationship with religious tradition is shaped by the nuts and bolts of early life. I grew up in a Roman Catholic country, and was so educated. My experience of the Church was sweet and loving, and it was left to me to believe or not. My teenage years brought in doubt and a growing irritation with the patriarchal society I belonged to, and which the Catholic model sustained. At the time Argentina suffered a dictatorship and its war against two revolutionary groups. Acts of terrorism and government orchestrated brutality were the order of the day. The Church was split between a conservative Junta supporting faction and the supporters of liberation theology who condemned the government actions. The opposition was silenced by assassination, the event is known as La Massacre de San Patricio. This was my family’s church, the murdered priests were well known to me. The same institution that betrayed the citizenry with its support of military excess, also produced the martyrs who opposed it.
Faith in the utopia of an after life too often has obeyed servility to inequity, but hope for a humanist utopia is good fuel for the efforts in improving social dysfunction and moral failing.
th_Eroses: Your work seems to engage with and subsequently produce an atemporal- or only loosely temporally situated- realm of the symbolic from the collective cultural storybook. This intertextual or metalinguistic representation of existing stories seems to emerge from the perspective of the reader, whose lived experiences commingle with the realm of the mythic to form impressions and even worldviews (rather than, for example, the telephoto lens of the documentarian). What are some of your thoughts regarding the representation of a story? What does it mean to represent something which is, itself, a representation? How do your lived experiences commingle with the realm of the mythic in your work and/or worldview and personal iconography?
Sandra: The subjects, characters and ethical ambiguities in myths and other inter-generational stories are restless, nor do their plots rest. They are of course archetypal representations, and thus serve and adapt to multiple cultures, and are used by one generation after another. The mythic is but the mind’s stage. These days our popular media, the genres of fantasy, sci-fi, romantacy and gaming reproduce them on small and large screens and on the page, and continue to furnish some context to the mysteries of human nature, origin and conflict. The arts in general have made use of them from the year dot in its relentless commentary on human life. There’s something rather glorious about this shared existence across time and place, both embedded in our minds in a Jungian sense and belonging to the collective. We tell a story over and over, and each time we produce a singular version of it, even if such exists barely in the inflection of our telling, the representation of a representation is never ending, and seemingly able to be continually enthralling. If anything is immortal on this Earth, it may be this.
th_Eroses: Do the motifs and characters in your work arise from your subconscious thought / awareness, or through specific experiences and/or forms of conscious awareness? Do they arise quickly in their final form, or do they articulate themselves through a process or drawing and development?
Sandra: I should say it’s impossible to escape both the subconscious and accumulated experience, and of course, subconscious and experience feed and shape each other constantly. They are the artist’s tool, whatever our degrees of awareness. As to the work produced, this symbiosis applies to form and content equally. My process varies, I may start with an idea or intention, or it may come from random drawings. I’ll give an example of this. I draw a lot, it entertains me on the subway and when waiting. Usually these drawings run in series, sometimes to the many dozens. One of these was on the subject of cockfights, behind it was my observation of political wrangling. From this came a painting I called The Cockfight and later, two complex narrative pen and ink drawings on gambling.
images (left to right): 1) Del Amor 3. 2021. Graphite pencil on paper. 77 x 56 cm; 30 x 22 in
2) 2019. Watercolour pencil on paper. 18 x 13 cm; 7 x 5 in
3) 2025. Colored pencil. 13 x 18 cm; 5 x 7 in each
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
th_Eroses: Could you talk a bit about your relationship with the concept of beauty and the human form? There is a lot of figuration in your work, and the figures have a physicality and appetite that could be characterized as adamantly anti-transcendental- or conversely, as adamantly physical and embodied. Bodies, both human and animal, heave and whirl in motion. They whirl and entwine passionately in sex and war, chickens in cockfights and dogs whirling around each other in wariness and fascination. Flesh and bone are articulated in ways that feel physical and hungry - agents of appetite and desire. I have a sense here that there is a vision of the human condition, or of the nature of what it is to be a living being- that the ontological nature of the body is that of an agent of desire. Could you share some of your views on desire, the body and the spirit / soul?
Sandra: Beauty has meanings we can very nearly grab but never completely, though one can pack it with definable elements such as harmony of course. Ineffable and universal, subjectively, culturally and historically relative, it's one of those concepts unexplainable by any other. As to the human form it’s no doubt the species’ narcissistic imperative that we should perceive it as beautiful. I lean into this with some fascination, and I see this sentiment widely echoed in artists from time immemorial, whose work has made it its object. I use it in its emotional expression, its eloquence serving an idea or story. There’s an element of celebration of our complex humanity in this. A square is perfectly beautiful in its form, but a tear and a hand are beautiful for their form and the mystery they hold. The aspirations of desire and of the soul, tense and marvelously human in nature, are present in much of the work I do, with a nod to ethics. Any analysis of their relationship begs a reach to psychoanalysis.
th_Eroses: What can art do for woman? I’m interested in how contemporary feminists engage with the concept of intersectionality and the concept of womanhood. The core idea of expanding the concept of feminism was to promote a cohesive movement for the rights for marginalized demographic groups, which sounds constructive, but in some cases the push for solidarity seems to result in womanhood becoming lost in womxnhood, subsumed into the umbrella Other of all non-men. Is it possible that this is constructive, and that all genders exist essentially on a fluid and dynamic spectrum? Or is the category of womanhood specifically true and/or useful? What does it mean to be a woman? How is being a woman different from being not-a-man? What are the unique obligations and freedoms that a woman may have? For full disclosure, after reading the Marx Engels reader in my early 20s, for a time I felt that gender pronouns/identity should be fully dissolved as a concept in public life- that gendered pronouns would only be used in intimate/personal settings such as with a spouse / partner, and in all other situations, one would be simply a person. However, at the time I also felt that there was an argument for children/youth to be removed from their nuclear families and educated by the state, and my views on identity, politics, and the nuclear family have evolved since then.
Sandra: These questions (and your side comments) merit an essay. Firstly, I can’t come up with a list of benefits that would be applicable to one gender over another. What I do see is an opportunity in every field for women to push their rights and flourish, following centuries of exclusion from just about anything that brought us power and independence. The institutions of art today haven’t caught up, and we are still fighting for visibility. There’s a role for a militant art to comment and contradict the assumptions and historical depictions of the nature of womanhood. There’s also agency to be gained from a practice in creative work and in such production we stand tall next to the males who’ve dominated the profession. Like you, I’ve considered the need for a single ungendered pronoun. I think it’s time we had the choice of a new neutral pronoun, though I define myself as a she and my experience has made me a proud she and a strong feminist. As to family, might it be possible to educate generations into less neurosis, greater kindness etc? That I cannot answer, I hope within disenchantment.
th_Eroses: Could you talk a bit about your personal geographic journey? You note that in Buenos Aires, your “first two decades were pitched on the tensions between a loving family life and constant political upheavals, unrestrained military governments and the ominous danger of politically sanctioned brutality and censorship.” Could you elaborate on this experience and share a bit about your path to becoming an artist?
Sandra: I grew up and was first educated in Buenos Aires. This was a firmly established patriarchal society in which women still served men at table. As a child I searched for the heroines in comics and TV, there were practically none. Nor did I grow up knowing independent career women. I was very young when I began to observe and be very bothered by this, and what it could mean for my future. By the time I was a teenager I’d seen three coups d’état, a growing revolutionary movement and I knew how to bribe a policeman. I was a loved and cared-for child, my father had a well stocked bookcase and I was a reader. I read social sciences at the University of Belgrano, with the young instinct of social conscience. I admired the proponents of liberation theology and social justice, and embraced left-wing political theory, considering it the right path to redress the socioeconomic disparities of South America. I emigrated to CA and later to the UK where I completed a Foundation degree course in Fine Arts and a BA majoring in Illustration at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, renamed The University for the Creative Arts. I had longed to understand the process that went from nothing to creating a work of art. I could draw, I could think, and I began to paint.
th_Eroses: Could you talk a bit about your actual painting and drawing process? Do you like to carry a sketchbook and draw as you think about and see the world, or do you work in a set space? Do you work every day? Would you say you work quickly or slowly in completing a given piece?
Sandra: I carry a sketchbook and pencils everywhere, though I rarely draw what surrounds me. I draw to think, to develop ideas and to entertain myself. Carry a sketchbook and you’ll never be bored, said one of my teachers, and how true. The rest happens in my studio, in solitude. I paint in oils loosely and I draw tightly with a dip pen. I couldn’t tell you how long it takes to complete any piece of work, some things take longer to be resolved; an intricate, multilayered fairly large pen and ink drawing may take two or three weeks before I finish it.
th_Eroses: One does not initially seem to see significant traces of cosmopolitan New York- with all its rats, and high finance, and tourist helicopters, and machete stabbings- in the imagery and iconography of your work. However, upon further reflection, it does seem that to live in New York is to be a perpetual witness to motion, to appetite, to human aberrance, and to human desire. How do you think living in New York City affects your art?
Sandra: I’m not sure how New York affects my work. I see a lot of art here, which is always a good nutrient.
Images: 1) After Eden I, War. 2023. Oil on canvas. 183 x 183 cm; 72 x 72 in
2) After Eden II, Fratricide. 2024. Oil on canvas. 183 x 152 cm; 72 x 60 in
3) After Eden III, Fratricide. 2024. Oil on canvas. 152 x 183 cm; 60 x 72 in
4) After Eden IV, Migration. 2024. Oil on canvas. 213 x 183 cm; 84 x 72 in
5) After Eden V, The Witnesses. 2024. Oil on canvas. 244 x 183 cm; 96 x 72 in
6) After Eden VI, The Flood. 2024. Oil on canvas. 183 x 183 cm; 72 x 72 in
Photography © Paul Takeuchi
Artwork courtesy and copyright of the artist.
th_Eroses: Your work feels unflinching, corporeal, rapturous. The works in After Eden strike me as some of your most highly realized work. These works are strikingly articulate, with their artistic/painterly sensibility / intuition, nuanced color palette, complex rhythm of forms, and compelling thesis on human aberrance and the loss of innocence. Could you talk a bit about the process of making this work, of its conception/inspiration and of its realization?
Sandra: In 2022 the Russo-Ukrainian War escalated with another Russian invasion. Here we go again, is all I could think and feel. I’d often thought of painting an Adam and Eve and I did then. My Adam and Eve are in military garb. In 2023 I painted the first of the After Eden series, not yet knowing there would be a series. I took two elements of the early story, that of fratricide and that of the demand for sacrifice of a child.
th_Eroses: The motif of the child emerges in your work, as witnesses, observers, of the world they are born into. In After Eden, the artist is also portrayed as a witness. Could you talk about the role of the witness in society? What does the witness, be they artist or child, have done to them by what they observe, and what do they do to that society in turn by the act of witnessing? What are the burdens and duties of the witness?
Sandra: With a small gram of hope, I’d say the inescapable act of witnessing a public event will elicit some degree of judgement and feeling, and may educate a person into some form of civic responsibility. It may transform the passivity of simply being present and the private act of voyeurism into an opportunity for testimony. In the world I grew up in, the act of witnessing could generate fear. I was a child when I witnessed the aftermath of a shooting, for example.
Witnessing is an artist’s tool, whether the event witnessed belongs to their exterior reality or it involves their psychological experience, when transposed into a piece of work to be seen by another it’ll create a second act of witnessing and a second witness. The entire history of art, the legacy of generations of artists is a huge document of their times and lives.
We may be burdened by witnessing, but would I do without any of it? I’d say no.
th_Eroses: The notion of downfall is predicated on potential energy- that is, something must have previously been in a higher state in order to experience a downfall, and can thus through force, perhaps force of will, return to a state of grace. Could you talk a bit about your conceptions of downfall and grace? Do you think that humankind has the opportunity to redeem our world? Must the artist or witness even necessarily feel required to propose schematics for salvation?
Sandra: Perhaps it might be useful to consider downfall and state of grace as the extremes between which the human spirit pivots, unavoidably by facts of its disordered nature and the disorders of the wider world. We might then offer a promising outcome to the oscillation, and thus, chances for redemption. Much as I’m dismayed by human behavior today, I’m buoyed by every sign that we live in a better world than that of Moctezuma.
I find it hard enough to pin down a satisfying, single and complete definition of what art is, to therefore have any base from which to construct a mission for the artist. I do, however, hope for artistic integrity and honesty. I have preferences, I seek a commitment to singularity in the work.