When doing a quick search of ‘hero’ online, the immediate similarities that come up all include ‘man’ in the title; ‘brave man’, ‘man of courage’, ‘man of the hour’. And when researching ‘historical heroes’, there seemed to be a great lack of representation of those who are not a man.
In my project, I worked through this realisation of just how concrete the idea of a hero was in mythology as well as history, and how in modern times we have expanded our ability to define ‘hero’. I wanted to critique how the achievements and abilities of specifically women were diminished and forgotten about through a biased lens of history being written by men (both literally and figuratively). I also wanted to show how we have the power today to rewrite a more accurate history, which prove and exemplify not only men’s achievements as heroes, but others too.
In doing this through a process of experimentation and iteration testing, I created two publications which sit side by side. I used bible paper to convey just how important this message must be moving forward, as well as the fact that it should be referred to at any given chance. I used found imagery as well as my own lino printing and language to further show an active process of manually rewriting heroes in history – one that is just and brings to light some names that may have been forgotten.
The mortals story must be told, as although they call themselves heroes, she is no less. Her legacy will live on through you and me, we cannot forget these stories.