Artist Statement

Devoured Women

Nearly every opera concludes with a woman’s death - often gruesome, usually over love, always tragic. I began with the question: why are women in opera treated as temporary, sacrificial, and punishable? In opera, the feminine is inseparable from suffering. Some deserve their death, a sentence for their sins of pleasure and love, while others’ deaths are treated as sheer, undeserved tragedy. Even when the woman lives, it is often without happiness or comfortable resolution. To explore and communicate this phenomenon, I used the cameo, which reemerged in the 19th century alongside most of these popular operas. Hanging a cameo portrait on a wall or wearing one as jewelry evokes ideas of memory, and how we interact with memory in our daily lives. The cameo’s traditional connotations of femininity is amplified by the use of feminine florals, lace, and decorations; this combination of feminine form and materials plays off of the tradition of feminine death in opera.

I selected women from six of the most famous operas with the most infamous deaths: In Carmen (1875), the bohemian title character is dramatically stabbed and murdered by her jealous lover; the Parisian courtesan Manon in Manon (1884) dies in prison after a brief life of pleasure and passion; Floria Tosca in Tosca (1899) throws herself out a window to avoid being arrested for killing a man who pursued her; in La Bohème (1896), the poor, pure, and undeserving Mimi dies of tuberculosis; Marguerite in Faust (1859) is corrupted, impregnated, and abandoned by Faust, and dies after being jailed for killing her baby; in Madama Butterfly (1904), the young Ciocio-san marries a U.S. naval officer, who quickly leaves her and their son in Japan for an American wife - when he returns with his new wife to take their child, she slits her throat.

In preparatory research, I came across a phrase that encapsulates these concerns: “It is as if genre itself seems to devour women.” The genre of opera does indeed consume women at an alarmingly rapid pace, furthering the idea that women are consumable and sacrificial when it comes to romance, and that tragedy can only be truly expressed through feminine death. The pairing of these lost female characters with the memento format of the cameo is an attempt to reconcile the devoured women with their memory.

Bio: Manon Wogahn was born in Pasadena, California. Upon graduation in May 2018 from Chapman University, she will have a BA in Art History with minors in French and the Honors Program. With a background in fashion illustration and design, she has also studied at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena and has exhibited at the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University.