I have been entranced by depictions of the Virgin Mary since 2013. In my work, I propose that her religious associations are only part of the narrative around her, and indeed she is a sign pointing to questions around gender, femininity, sexuality, the body, identity, trauma, sorrow, iconography and more. She is also a figure whose identity can and should be redistributed: she is one of us, she is all of us. Since 2019, I have been obsessively collecting Catholic objects, including many depicting the Virgin Mary. I have mostly been using these objects as part of installations alongside my portraits of people. Over time, however, they have begun to compel me as individual photographic subjects themselves. In photographing these objects at close range, the transformative magic of the photographic process begins to render them human. Often mass-produced with attempted stoic or tender expressions, these statuettes become uncanny before the lens, their faces expressing different expressions including detachment, dissociation, and pain, at times mirroring my own experiences of sexual trauma and chronic illness.