This project was conceived in early 2003, as the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq became a certainty. In public discourse, I was struck how the discussion revolved around the notion of 'Empire' and the tactical elements of warfare. Everyone seemed to be reading Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and boning up on Carl von Clausewitz's theories of military strategy.
I longed for a feminist perspective of our 'War on Terror'.

I found such perspective in three book-length essays: Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas (1936), Simone Weil's The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940) and Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others (2004).

The visual framework for the work also developed from the conceit of 'Empire'. I envisioned an earlier empire with it's cast of mythic female goddesses, updated to represent our current mythology of power. To wit, my protagonists:

The Muses
daughters of Zeus who are the source of artistic inspiration
In the rich intellectual pursuits of literature, philosophy and art criticism I find my Muses: Woolf, Weil and Sontag.

The Furies
avenging spirits whose task it is to extract blood for blood
As a contemporary political warrior, Condoleezza Rice engages in the machinations of an imperialist nation.

The Fates
who ultimately control the destiny of mortals
Here it is the artist (myself) who attempts to weave an understanding of military violence and personal complicity.