Primary Target

Oil on Canvas
36 x 36 inches
2025

"Primary Target" shows a woman struck by an arrow in the forehead, with an apple balanced above her head — the supposed “target” — cropped partly out of view. At first glance, it looks like a near miss, as if the arrow was meant for the fruit but slipped. Yet the composition reveals the truth: the woman was always the target, the apple only a decoy. This visual trick mirrors how patriarchal violence often disguises itself — framed as accident, discipline, or “just the way things are” — when in truth it is deliberate and systemic. The work underlines how women are not collateral damage but primary targets, attacked precisely because their very existence as women makes them the focus of control and punishment. The work critiques the false narratives that disguise gendered violence as misfortune or mistake, showing instead that women’s bodies are treated as primary targets under patriarchal logic.