The Feminist Rose

2021

Triptych

Lamb nappa, vegetable‑tanned leather, soling board, cork, turned beechwood

Bud: 50 cm Ø × 25 cm
Bloom: 60 cm Ø × 15 cm
Feminist Rose: 70 cm Ø × 25 cm

The Feminist Rose is a triptych of sculptural shoe–plant hybrids that reworks the rose as a contested symbol of femininity. Moving through three stages - Bud, Bloom, and Feminist Rose, the work draws parallels between the lifecycle of the rose and culturally imposed narratives surrounding women’s lives, particularly expectations of beauty, value, and decline.

Constructed from footwear making materials each stage increases in scale and intensity, shifting the rose away from fragility and towards assertion. The central work references Georges Bataille’s Language of Flowers (1927), in which the rose is described as paradoxical — idealised in bloom yet dismissed once its petals fall. Cope responds to this logic by refusing collapse or diminishment as an endpoint.

The final form, Feminist Rose, resists stereotypes of loss or aesthetic failure in later life, reframing maturity as the most authoritative and materially present state.