Deborah Kelly

This work is part of Curatorial+Co.'s 2026 group exhibition, 'The Beast In Me'.

Of all the internal mechanisms that drive us, perhaps the most primordial is the beast. We expel the animal, the bodily, the base in favour of the intellect, yet it is the beast that holds what is most irreducibly human—impulses and desires that precede thought: love, rage, care, protection, connection. The very thing we suppress is also the thing that touches what is most vital.

Says Deborah Kelly of this work, "I began this work while on residency in North Western Jutland, where I was working with the remnants of a rural utopian community. Some of the imagery comes from historical documentation of the Danish dream of ordinary magic and self-rule, and this work reflects upon the desires and dashed hopes of that imagined other world.

"An earlier iteration of Fire Fae starred in my animation 'The Gods of Tiny Things', where she births several of the other characters. She also exists as a tapestry-woven cotton blanket and a postcard.

"More recently, I added painted elements to the character over several months, and here she has arrived at her final form."