Title: The Lovers
from the Sapphic Enchantress Tarot Deck
Year: 2020
Size: 15x9,5 cm
Technique: Illustration, fine liners on paper

Description
I created the Sapphic Enchantress Tarot Deck with the intention of creating a card system that could resonate with an audience especially consisting of people of marginalised genders and sexual orientations. The deck consists exclusively of women, as a deliberate expression of the intrinsic wholeness of women within themselves. This deck explores not only the love that can exist between women, but also the strength that exists in women themselves. The prominent depiction of sapphic women situated in natural settings is a subtle response to the homophobic reduction of queer love and intimacy to something that is “unnatural”. I attempted to express our truth: that not only are we not “unnatural”, but we are, in fact, nature within ourselves. The way I depicted the women in these cards is a statement against the mainstream symbolic violence that is wrought upon women through their representation in ways that would appeal to the male gaze, and ways that reduce them to only responding to that gaze. My representation of women aims to give them the power and self confidence with which to feel at home in their bodies, in the many shapes and sizes in which they exist, without the demonisation of natural and com-mon (more so than not) features such as body fat, body hair, cellulite, stretch marks and scars. I also created a handmade tarot zine based on my research into tarot and my own tarot practice, detailing key meanings of each card (upright and reversed), analysis of tarot symbolism and imagery, and guidelines for how to read and use the cards.