In this compelling artistic venture, Catalina Swinburn has selected names of emblematic women from
Christine de Pizan’s ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ and engraved them as titles into the books of her fictional
library, ‘Athena’ (2024).

The artist has worked with the leather of the book spine as opposed to its paper contents, creating an
image of a dismantled library of page-less books, which acts as a metaphor for the missing narratives of
women in history. Through the process of deconstructing books and reweaving this material into an
artwork, Swinburn recycles the past into the present to create a newly woven narrative, a mythological
cloak in appreciation of the revolutionary myths of women throughout history. Functioning as both
garment and artwork; when worn, it yields the power to create sacred space for inner transformation and
instills a divine female presence into the place of worship, historically void of feminine energy.

The woven artworks of Catalina Swinburn seek to revalidate the place of women throughout history.
Although ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ was written more than half a millennium ago, it is filled with potent
observations for our times, articulating its arguments much in the same way as today’s debate on the
equality of women.

With this text as the work’s medium, “ATHENA” is an appreciation of the vital feminine contributions to
human civilization across political, spiritual, and practical spheres.