Medea: Myth, Violence, and the Female Figure | Léna h. Coms

The figure of Medea runs throughout Léna h. Coms’ visual and theatrical work as that of a woman confronted with betrayal, abandonment, and loss, but also as a figure of radical transformation. Far from reducing her to the image of the monstrous or vengeful woman so often imposed upon her by tradition, she is what comes before the act: the woman who loves, who waits, who hopes, then finds herself rejected and forced to reinvent her own power beyond exile and wandering.

Medea thus becomes an ambivalent figure — at once victim, sorceress, lover, and destroyer — whose anger opens up a space for questioning the place given to women in mythological narratives and in society.

In painting as in theatre, she joins other female figures such as Penelope and Salome: women caught within stories written by others, often victorious men, who here become the centre of the narrative — beyond anecdote or the margins.

You can also encounter her in the play The Two Medeas.