My Snake is Bigger than Your Snake

Film, Drawings, and Sculpture

In My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake, Rebecca Goyette presents an intimate and irreverent exploration of mourning as a creative, sensual, and transformational act. Through film, drawing, and performative ritual, this collection traces the emotional and psychic landscapes of loss—where memory, eroticism, and surreal humor intertwine.

Anchored by the titular film, My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake, Goyette guides viewers through an experimental grief ritual following the death of her father. The work is deeply personal, marking a new emotional territory in her oeuvre. Within this visceral terrain, themes of psychosexual liberation, catharsis, and familial reckoning unfold through a surreal narrative of domination and surrender—most notably through the symbolic "Snake Man," a figure wrapped in plastic and suspended between fetish and transcendence.

The accompanying drawing series—created in the liminal space before and after her father’s passing—emerged from a deeply subconscious place. Discovered after the funeral, the first two drawings captured family scenes rendered with erotic marginalia and intricate, sigil-like borders. Without initially realizing it, Goyette had begun illustrating her grief as myth, crafting a new language for memory and mourning. Over time, the series expanded into a visual memoir that speaks not only to familial bonds, but also to the strange, often contradictory rituals we create to make sense of life after death.

My Snake Is Bigger Than Your Snake is a collection that affirms grief as a generative force. Through kink, comedy, mysticism, and vulnerability, Goyette invites viewers into a world where mourning becomes magic—and where catharsis, like pleasure, can set us free.