The Family Jewels is a series depicting the glamorous appearance and lifestyle of royal hermaphrodites, by Hannah Barrett. The divine beings garden, ride horseback, take tea, frolic in the bedroom, and cook dinner in the castle kitchen. Like many an official portrait of the Christ Child, the genitals are exposed in order to verify their unique status. These are enviable creatures possessing everything a person could possibly want from multi-sexuality to opulent surroundings.

Although ancient in concept, the hermaphrodite is the way of the future, the solution to endless dissatisfaction with the limitations of male and female. The past, while it is full of great art and paintings, is unfortunately saturated with inhumanity. Even the imagination cannot free itself from history, because something is always based on something else. The world of the hermaphrodites has digested the past and created an unexpected ending to the story.

The Family Jewels span a three-year period and consist of collages and drawings, which are collected in a Zine, and paintings. In the collages the sources for the images are visible including the parts of HRH Queen Elizabeth II and Adolf Hitler that were cannibalized and hybridized to create the figures. When designing the hermaphrodite prototype, what better people to start with than the very two individuals, who, more than anyone else in the 20th century, symbolize master race? The drawings fuse the pieces together and obscure their origins, while the paintings seduce with color and gold. Although the pictures are graphic, and specific, they are frankly imaginary and open to interpretation.

[ Click here for a review of The Family Jewels at Howard Yezerski Gallery (Boston Globe, December 14, 2011) ]