Interview by Amelia McGarveyPortrait by Matthew Weinberger

AM The geography of Centerfolds reads as if you began with a broad interest in Playboy and then gradually closed in on Dorothy Stratten. Is this true?

CB The layout is intentional, but I began with Dorothy Stratten and then thought about Playboy after. I had known about her for a while and had seen Bob Fosse’s biopic of her, Star 80 (1983). By chance, I watched this show called Secrets of Playboy (2022), where they interview one of Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends. She spoke about Dorothy’s death and read one of her poems. I was like, how come none of the media I’d consumed about her ever mentioned that she’d been a poet? From there I thought about Playboy more. The bunny suit appears dated and foreign, but also iconic, like Mickey Mouse. Everyone knows it the way they would a big corporate logo. I thought about it as infrastructure for mainstreaming the pinup image. A lot of our imagery of women now comes from that. When I see the women in their bunny suits, standing next to men in suits as they often are, I think about the visual conveyance of power dynamics. All of my work has dealt with power dynamics, so this project feels like a really clean, compact way to address everything I’ve been talking about for the last ten years.

AM Your 2024 poetry collection Goodnight Sweet Thing (2024) was your bridge between Dorothy’s poetry and yours. Were you hoping to impart a sense of her interiority into Centerfolds as well?

CB Yes and no, because I don’t have ownership of her interiority, so I can’t actually use it. I felt that through the medium of painting – where there’s no language ascribed to it, just emotion, material, colour – there’s a space to hold her interiority without owning it. With the thicker wax works, the added layer gives the appearance that she’s stuck under a frozen lake. There’s this feeling of wanting to get impossibly closer to something when you look at the works in person. For me, this has been the experience of trying to access her interiority. I wish that it was there, but it’s not.

AM The encaustic paint as a medium – as you say, having them frozen under a lake – makes for quite a violent image. But there is also a sense of protecting them against some untoward force. Where do you see yourself in the lineage of people trying to preserve Dorothy’s image one way or another?

CB Most of the attempts at preserving her memory were made by three men with different motivations. It’s funny that you mention the frozen lake as a violent image, I’ve never thought about it like that. But of course they would be dead if they were frozen! I see my role as bringing her back into the cultural conversation; I don’t like the way she has been documented historically. I wanted to reproduce what Andy Warhol did with Marilyn Monroe, removing her subjecthood so far from the final image that she becomes somehow transhuman. I thought it would be interesting to give Dorothy that iconic space, even though many people won’t know who she is. I like that complicated act of viewing. You feel like you should know her, but you don’t.

AM How did you integrate scent into the exhibition?

CB I have known Marissa Zappas, a NYC-based perfumer, for a few years, and I’ve always admired her approach to perfume. I knew I wanted a scent component for this show and that it had to be Marissa. The themes of our work are very aligned, and I felt she would be open to the brief. A lot of her perfumes bring back vintage smells in very unconventional ways. We landed on the idea of having a scent in one room of the exhibition. The ground floor is the infrastructure, the first floor is the cause and effect, and the second floor [where the perfumed room is] is the memorial. My sculpture The Well (2025) explores the mythology of the well across cultures. In the West, we have the wishing well, where you ask for something in exchange for something else. You have to look down a well to view the video in the sculpture. The camera lens is like a contemporary myth of the well: the act of being photographed, what is consented to when you’re photographed, and what happens to the person who views the photograph after. With the perfume, we thought about what can’t be taken away. You can’t recirculate or reproduce a scent. I wanted that space to have something that was just for her, and that can’t be commodified in the same way.

AM The act of looking down the chimney in The Well feels very cheeky: you’re not meant to get close to artworks like that. The mirrored surface makes you catch yourself looking into this peephole, so you’re aware of yourself as a voyeur. That voyeurism feels true to the show all over, but it’s not pornography, for example.

CB I think of the show as more about the act of looking, and less so voyeurism, because that usually implies looking at something you shouldn’t. But these are situations where the women are being viewed consensually; historically women have been staged in different scenarios, from the bunny suit to pornography. There’s so much I could say about that. The mirror is intentional, to bring an awareness to what you’re consenting to and the relationship you have with the subject and the photographer.

AM With your poetry practice, and the broader sense of autobiography in your art, did you feel like this was a project about someone else, or something more personal?

CB I identify with the experience of misogyny more than anything. I’m constantly reminded that I’m a woman in a very gendered way, and I think of my grandmother and my mother, and how their generation experienced misogyny and survived. When I look at Dorothy’s story I see a whole person, but then her beauty and image dominate so much. I think all of my work winds up being about gender as much as I avoid it. With poetry, I think it’s the same. It’s more personal, specific and unapologetic, and I try to give myself a voice without concerning myself with the consequences. I think that given the erotic content of the paintings, audiences assume women will hate them – especially now because of Jeffrey Epstein. But my works often really resonate with women, and I enjoy seeing that play out. .