God/ess Power

Ceramics, Drawings

In God/ess Power, Rebecca Goyette conjures a deeply personal and mythopoetic investigation into feminine archetypes, ancestral memory, and divine resistance. Through a trio of ceramic sculptures, Goyette merges self-portraiture, mythology, and historical narrative to explore the complex terrain of feminine identity across time and space. Her work asks: What does it mean to embody god-like power in a world that seeks to suppress, commodify, or pathologize it?

The series begins with The Triple Goddess, a meditation on intergenerational identity and embodiment. Merging the archetypes of the maiden, mother, and crone into a unified form, Goyette intertwines her own likeness with that of her mother, sculpting a shared body that reflects lineage, inheritance, and transformation. Each archetype is anchored in place: the maiden emerges in the artist’s childhood backyard, the mother through the stitching of a quilt pattern, and the crone by the view from her mother’s window in New York City. What results is not just a familial portrait, but a sculptural invocation of matrilineal power and spiritual continuity.

Inanna and the Plague Doctor positions the ancient goddess of love and war in conversation with an icon of medical control. Starkly nude, Inanna stands beside the fully garbed plague doctor—one figure exudes openness and sensuality, the other, distance and regulation. Their juxtaposition is at once absurd and provocative, opening questions of power, desire, and resistance to domination. The work refuses easy answers, instead inviting viewers into the tension between vulnerability and authority, seduction and surveillance.

In Saint Dymphna, Goyette turns to hagiography to honor a figure of radical compassion and resistance. The sculpture memorializes the Irish martyr who, after fleeing incestuous pursuit by her father, used his wealth to establish a hospice for the mentally ill—only to be murdered by the very patriarchal force she defied. Yet Dymphna’s legacy lives on in Geel, Belgium, where the tradition of care she inspired persists to this day. Through this retelling, Goyette lifts up Dymphna as both saint and symbol: a protector of those cast aside, and a reminder that healing can be an act of collective rebellion.

Across this series, God/ess Power reclaims mythology, spirituality, and history from the grip of institutional control. Goyette presents divine femininity not as static iconography, but as a dynamic force—wild, wounded, and wise—that traverses generations, fights back, and heals.