Green Sea Swallow Tail

Project Room Having explored the challenges of bodily transformation for many years through her photographs of subjects directly affected by theatricality, staging and cross-dressing, Estelle Hanania is now applying the notion of metamorphosis to her own image production. She has developed a series of photographic totems, born out of a desire to regain control of her photographic material and the need to give physical form to her stories. Entitled Green Sea Swallow Tail, the series is presented in February 2026 at the Project Room of the Suzanne Tarasieve Gallery. This refers to a rare species of butterfly from Southeast Asia with iridescent blue- green wings and an indifferent gender. During the summer of 2017, the photographer accompanied three young drag queens as they prepared each evening to perform in a cabaret in the centre of Yogyakarta, on the island of Java. This involved several hours of shaping bodies and faces for a final, albeit ephemeral, metamorphosis. The exhibition consists of images from this series, as well as three totems. In this case, the animal totem is the butterfly, which becomes the symbolic theatre of metamorphosis. This idea of identity construction is celebrated and unfolded through facets, shifts and mutations: an identity that is literally handcrafted, with eyebrows glued on with UHU glue, foundation applied in dozens of layers to the skin, foam slipped under dresses to curve the hips and layers of tights to shape a leg. Blue lenses are also affixed to the irises. The figures stand tall and tell their stories through their fractured bodies — stories of identity in the making, which the subjects have taken into their own hands. These Totems, the photographer's autonomous worlds, take root and incarnate before us, inviting us to reconsider our perception of reality and imagine alternative narratives.

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