Abbigail Knowlton Israelsen
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Israelsen’s fanciful scenarios and fantastical realms are inspired by fairy tales and nightmares. These stories express disenchantment with contemporary society and question the ruling standards of taste and behavior. In Breaking the Disney Spell, Jack Zipes states, “Although the plots varied and the themes and characters were altered, the classic fairy tale for children and adults reinforced the patriarchal symbolic order based on rigid notion of sexuality and gender.”

Creating alternate environments establishes a vehicle to discuss our internal anxiety and uncertainty about the world, its social expectations, and our sanity. Israelsen embraces crude production values with the use of small paper cut outs, in contrast to her academic drawing. Through this rudimentary aesthetic she exposes the deepest imaginings of the consensually primitive self.