Juliet Caliva

Lesmurdie Senior High School

Year 12

Acrylic paint on canvas

60 x 2 x 75 cm

This artwork, inspired by the theme of ‘Pretend’, addresses the psychiatric disorder ‘Capras Delusion’, whereby a person believes a close friend or family member has been replaced by an identical imposter. Influenced by the early classical portraiture of Max Ernst, I have attempted to capture the formal arrangement and analogous colour palette of a 19th century portrait but with surrealist subject matter. The child has the head of a Cuckoo while its two parents are Meadow Pipits. The Cuckoo is a parasitic bird which lays eggs in the nests of different species, tricking them into raising its offspring. In this artwork, the juvenile Cuckoo is pretending to be a part of this family, when in reality it is an imposter.