Kira Somerset: Portfolio of Sculptural Painting & Architectural Installations
Sublime Womanhood
Installation, sculpted acrylic paint rocks, dollhouse, 110 × 90 × 125 cm
Sublime Womanhood is a sculptural installation series that explores the hidden abuse embedded within culturally idealised notions of femininity and domestic safety. At first glance, the pink fabric dollhouse tent suggests innocence, play, and stereotypical girlhood. But as the tent doors open to reveal sharp pink rocks tumbling out, the illusion shatters.
Inspired by Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, a 13-year-old Somali girl who was gang-raped and then stoned to death for "adultery" in 2008. This piece remembers her, and speaks to the violence endured by girls punished for surviving.This work draws attention to the way such abuse is often buried beneath social norms, family structures, and state systems that fail to protect.
The title leverages the duality of the term “sublime”—aesthetic beauty mixed with overwhelming or terrifying force. Here, Sublime Womanhood reframes femininity as something not merely delicate, but vast, complex, and capable of containing both joy and trauma.
This work challenges the viewer to confront the contradictions of womanhood: how softness can coexist with sharpness, and how safety can be a constructed illusion.
Karmic
2016, 5 × 21 ft, Sculptural Installation, acrylic paint, glitter, sequins
This expansive work is composed entirely of hand-manipulated acrylic paint, embellished with glitter and sequins. Built through a process of layering, peeling, and reconfiguring dried paint, the piece occupies a space between painting and sculpture. The surface glimmers with reflected light, drawing attention to its tactile richness and the tension between fragility and flamboyance.
The materials, traditionally decorative—are recontextualized here as structural elements. The work invites close inspection, revealing fine details that evoke both celebration and decay. It resists categorization, asserting itself as both image and object, surface and form.
Glitter functions in the work as both a material and a visual language. All glitter used was already in the artist’s possession; incorporating it into the work offers a more responsible alternative to disposal.
The glitter is sealed within the finished pieces, ensuring it remains contained and stable as part of the work. Future works will be produced using biodegradable glitter alternatives.
Lonely Hearts Club
2025, Sculpted acrylic paint skins and glitter on canvas, 117 × 178 cm
This monumental work takes its title from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—an iconic exploration of persona, costume, and the freedom found in adopting an alter-ego.
The large surface is consumed by hundreds of deep-pink, glittering hearts. While the color and overwhelming scale create an initial aesthetic of feminine abundance and sweetness, the hearts themselves are hollow.
Somerset uses this contrast to examine the cost of the outward performance of identity. The ritualistic process of sculpting these empty, glittering forms speaks to the immense effort required to curate and maintain a public self. The work asks: when we adopt a persona in order to be seen or to belong, is what remains at the core truly expressive, or merely a hollow, dazzling facade?
Blow
2025, 5 x 5 ft, Sculptural Installation, Acrylic paint, glitter
Built through a meticulous process of layering and pouring, the piece occupies the volatile space between fluid and solid.
The surface, a high-saturation palette of magenta and pink, glimmers with a deceptive, tactile richness, highlighting the tension between the fragility of the medium and the flamboyance of its presentation.
By recontextualizing decorative materials as heavy, structural forms.
Nuance
2026, Sculpted acrylic paint, acrylic paint, glitter, on canvas, 70 × 70cm
Featuring the phrase “god forbid a pr tty girl’s eccentric,” this work challenges the systemic reduction of complex identity into digestible, dismissive labels. The intentional omission of the ‘E’ in "pretty" serves as a nod to "negging"—a subtle, calculated undermining of value. Despite the missing character, the word remains fully legible, suggesting that the core of an individual's identity persists even when subjected to external attempts to diminish or "edit" it.
80’s Baby
2024, Mixed media on canvas, 150 × 330 cm
Painted on unstretched canvas to accommodate its monumental scale, the piece is a raw and unfiltered exploration of form, colour, and texture.
The mark-making is complex and ever-shifting—no two areas are alike, inviting the viewer to lose themselves in the work’s layered intricacy. An unexpected pastel drawing cuts across the canvas like a lifeline—risky, spontaneous, and ultimately transformative. What began as a private act of catharsis has become the artist’s most cherished piece to date.
PLEASE! I’M A STAR!
2025, Mixed media on canvas, 123 × 93 cm
A monumental figurative study that documents the transition from observation to self-proclamation. Spanning six years, this face is an accumulation of oil paint, oil pastels, and gold thread.
The hand-sewn crown of crosses acts as a literal and metaphorical intersection a point where religious iconography meets personal sovereignty. It is an exploration of 'Divine Worth'; the act of an artist crowning themselves when the world refuses to provide the ceremony.
The title, a reference to the film Pearl injects a sense of desperate, manic ambition and raw vulnerability into the work. This is mirrored by the stars, a deliberate nod to Hedy Lamarr, whose profound scientific intelligence was long overshadowed by the world’s fixation on her beauty. By weaving these elements together, the work reclaims the brilliance often buried beneath the surface of an image.
It is a loud, unapologetic celebration of resilience and the ritual of coming back to oneself.
