Bearing Arms
Fionna Furtado
Bearing Arms explores the history and imagery of women holding swords through themes of power, violence, and play. I look at how women with weapons have been represented across time and what that says about strength, fear, beauty, and control. Through photography and physical objects like engraved leather, I place myself into these narratives to question who gets to hold power and how it is perceived. The project lives somewhere between archival research and personal experimentation. At its core, it asks what it means for a woman to take up space while holding something traditionally seen as dangerous. It also looks at how these images shift depending on context: whether they are seen as threatening, performative, or even dismissed. By inserting myself into these scenes, I’m not just referencing history but pushing against it, using my own body to test how these ideas hold up now. The work isn’t trying to give a clear answer, but to sit in that tension between control and vulnerability, and to question why certain forms of power feel uncomfortable when they are held by women.