Faculty of Art

Sculpture/Installation

Susan MacPhail

14 Unhappy Bride

This clay sculpture reinterprets a dark fairytale by depicting a young princess as a prematurely aged woman, using her wrinkled and grieving face to show the heavy emotional toll of lost freedom and forced marriage.

“"This sculpture emerges from a reimagined fairytale in which a young princess is promised a “gift” that reveals itself as a loss of agency. Unhappy Bride captures the moment when illusion collapses into reality. Princess Matilda was brothed to an old knight. Rather than depicting Princess Matilda as a child, I chose to sculpt her as the elderly woman, physically transformed by a witch, before her time, her face marked by grief, resignation, and the weight of decisions made for her.The aged figure becomes a symbol rather than a literal character. Her wrinkled skin and contorted expression speak to how power, patriarchy, and transactional relationships can prematurely erode identity. The tears she sheds are not only for a lost future, but for the self she was never allowed to become.Working in clay allowed me to emphasize tactility and vulnerability, the softness of the material echoing the fragility of the human condition. This piece invites viewers to reconsider romanticized narratives of marriage and obedience, and to confront the emotional cost of silenced autonomy."”