As she looks at the viewer of the scene, herself its first, there’s an evident ambivalence about the whole situation. A sense of resignation about her need to explain it, her need for change. Perhaps when creating this painting, in the back of her mind she knew it could be the right cord to plug into the right socket, to electrify her into building a new life.
Born in Illinois and almost entirely self-taught, this is Dorothea Tanning, with her infamous, ambiguous look at the viewer from her celebrated self-portrait, “Birthday.” A reflection, a rendering of herself during the year when she joined, then left, a six-month-long marriage. Lost a little, as if the commitment she’d made with passion only recently revealed itself to be a mistake.
“I look back on those early paintings as history. They are not really what I am now, or want, but it was a way to begin.”
She opened a door, she will soon close it. But in this moment, trapped forever in paint, she portrays herself in solitude, in a room off to the side of a series of open doors, options that trail behind her in an infinitely repetitious sequence, haunting her like a shadow.
A bat, hungry to be suspended in the dark, lingers in front of her in the meantime, pawing the sun-dappled ground as she stands casually behind, oh so at ease. A symbol of her shadow self, perhaps—eager to escape the banality of her current daytimes. She’s in a jacket of purple and gold, ruffled with her breasts and chest exposed, with pants designed like a loose adventurer, covered in seaweed as if her legs, hidden, are transitioning between human and siren. In the habitat where she’s able to be herself, she’s existing with the accoutrements she wants, transitioning between living in her interior world and divulging it to future witnesses. Disclosing herself as she is in this exact moment, baroque and spare and alone.
In an interview with Carlo McCormick for BOMB Magazine in 1990, Tanning will reflect on the paintings she made during this moment in her life: “I look back on those early paintings as history. They are not really what I am now, or want, but it was a way to begin.”
In Search of a Room of Our Own
Virginia Woolf famously in 1928 (in a lecture directed to students of a women’s college) declared that women, artists, and by extension, all of us—need a room of our own in order to build a liberated and authentic life. In order to listen to ourselves, to conceive of ourselves as people who can make art, she declares a room its essential ingredient. According to her, other people and the society around us will impose themselves on our time, demand our attention, assume that we’ll be available to their every desire. We will need a room, she shares, because without putting up this boundary, others will not respect our need for solitude, for uninterrupted time dedicated to listening to the movements of our own minds. In fact, they will count on us to not listen to what we want.
The concept of existing in a room of one’s own is also a silent suggestion to women (and nonbinary and trans folks, of course—it’s just that in the 1920s those terms didn’t exist), that once isolated from the everydayness of the patriarchy, we could realize how we may go about resisting it. The existence of a space where a person is able to be present, unobserved by anyone, is revolutionary precisely because cis and trans women’s bodies are so often depicted in literature, history, and art, as available surfaces upon which others can project their desire for sustenance. Sustenance of love, of food, of connection to the earth, of beauty. In other words, the portrayal of women is often framed in an extractivist manner, that of a colonizing force imposing their weapons (knives, shovels, penis, hands, etc) upon her. By intentionally extricating herself from that dynamic, Woolf posits, she can conceive of a world where she need not live as a reaction to the projections of others, but as the engine of her own life.
The answer to liberation, according to Woolf, is answered only after we isolate ourselves from the imposition of others on our time. But is this so true?
Like many others born at the end of the 20th century, I read “A Room of One’s Own” for the first time in a high school English class, enraptured. I was particularly susceptible to becoming an acolyte of this essay as it was directed to someone like me—students who were still trying to figure out their place in the world, the kind of life they wanted to live, and who’d been conscious their entire upbringing of the fact that they might not be the kind of person the world was designed to reward. Whether because I was terrible at drawing boundaries at that time, or because I was figuring out how to be an artist, I interpreted her directive as if it were a literal command—not only did I reorganize my high school bedroom so my desk was placed right in front of a window, made sure to tell anyone that they now had to knock before barging into my room at any time of day, I also decided to go to a women’s college purely because of this lecture. At a loss for what I even wanted to study in university except to feel closer to whatever I thought freedom felt like at the time, I applied to the few universities I knew about that only admitted women and nonbinary folks, then enrolled in the one that accepted me and gave me a scholarship. Soon after enrolling, I realized it’s not a good enough reason to make a choice based purely on the fantasy of it. I ended up taking classes on an insane range of topics which was definitely fun, but certainly didn’t help me decide how to frame my life as an adult. When I learned that studying performance could be a way to connect my disparate interests together, I left this school.
It’s been almost a hundred years since Woolf’s declaration that a room was both a material as well as architectural necessity for the creation of an idiosyncratic life. But it’s easy to forget that this was her suggestion of the bare minimum, a bulwark as it were, against the insidious demands of a society that wants to keep swallowing everyone’s autonomy in service of capital.
The Economy of Art
Beginning on November 8 of 2025 until February 26 of 2026, the Philadelphia Art Museum (PHAM) is the host of the exhibition “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100,” the centenary celebration of the Surrealist movement. The exhibition is a collaboration between five museums from five different cities: the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, and this iteration in Philadelphia. The curation of this exhibit is also unique in that each city is responsible for revealing a particular prism through which the work of the featured artists can be interpreted. Since the 1950s, PHAM has been the museum in the United States with the most extensive collection of Surrealist art. Alongside the largest collection of art by Marcel Duchamp, its permanent collection also includes works by Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, and Dorothea Tanning—including “Birthday.” Using works from its permanent collection as well as ones on loan, as part of the “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 exhibit,” PHAM will feature, according to its press release, a “chronological installation arranged through six thematic sections, including one, unique to Philadelphia, that focuses on artists who fled from Europe to Mexico and the U.S. during World War II.”
“Birthday,” Tanning’s self-portrait, changed the course of her life when artist Max Ernst visited her studio in 1942, during the time he was seeking out artists to feature as part of Peggy Guggenheim’s upcoming exhibit, “Exhibition by 31 Women.” Guggenheim was Ernst’s wife at the time, who ran a famous gallery (often featuring the work of Surrealists) called Art of This Century. Tanning was still in the midst of working on the painting when she met Ernst, who suggested “Birthday” as its title. Flabbergasted by the acuity with which Tanning was portraying the sensation of inhabiting the unconscious self as an experience that combines the self and its shadow aspect at the edge of infinite doors of possibility, he declared that it must be in Guggenheim’s upcoming exhibition and should be called “Birthday,” as a mark of Tanning’s birth as a well-known artist. It was eventually featured as part of the exhibit and she gained significant renown as a result. She also soon became Ernst’s lover, who divorced Guggenheim in 1946 and married Tanning later that same year. Ernst and Tanning stayed together until he passed, a number of years where she continued to evolve her painting practice—eventually becoming a creator of enigmatic, embodied, erotic and abstract works that represent the feminine body in obscure and fragmented forms.
The worth of art in the market, in many ways, fluctuates based on the legends surrounding it. We walk through doors, never knowing when we’ll receive the key to the next one.
Later in life, Tanning joked that Ernst fell in love with her painting first, herself second.
In that same BOMB interview I mentioned earlier, Tanning speaks of her work from the 40s as one that was evidently made by someone who lived “solely in her imagination” and wasn’t as concerned with “the techniques of painting as about what’s being painted.” Of her later work, she says:
That’s what I tried for, the elusive moment. And it’s the same today, the same preoccupations. For instance, hardly anyone today paints the human form: it’s frowned upon for some reason. Too close, maybe, too frank. There used to be an expression: too hot to handle. I don’t see why one shouldn’t be absolutely fascinated with the human form, there are so many reasons to be. Besides, we are all living in human bodies, we go through life in this wonderful envelope. Why not acknowledge that and try to say something about it? So what I try to say about it is transformation.
Even though she continued to make ecstatic, elusive paintings of bodies in states of transition, “Birthday” never quite lost its renown as a painting that marked the beginning of her career as an artist, as well as her life with Ernst. While somewhat of a recluse, Tanning often publicly disparaged how few retrospectives of her work were featured in the United States, even though she was the rare artist from the U.S. who participated in the Surrealist movement. As a result, she was delighted when PHAM ended up purchasing “Birthday” in 1999 for close to $1 million, a high price for a painting by a woman artist at that time. In celebration of its acquisition, a retrospective of Tanning’s work was also organized in 2000 called “Dorothea Tanning: Birthday and Beyond.”
The worth of art in the market, in many ways, fluctuates based on the legends surrounding it. We walk through doors, never knowing when we’ll receive the key to the next one.
The Room I’ve Lived In
How would I conjure up a portrait of myself, a portrait of me at a crossroads? Someone trapped between the place they are and the places they wish to go, cursed by the places I’ve been? Something with similar elements to Tanning, probably—a series of doors, a silhouette with my chest tattoo showing, my flat feet too with their ribbyness, a black swimsuit underneath canvas pants, an unbuttoned white shirt, with an octopus somewhere in my sight line. A mahogany floor, a desk, a window, a lit candle, a velvet curtain, an empty coffee cup, the scent of sandalwood. Would that be enough? To explain my preoccupation with adventure as one without much sense for direction, and too much yearning in this imaginary room.
If you were to look into a window of me in solitude and I felt your gaze, I’d look up—shocked. Not just because you’re not welcome here, but because I’d probably be tracing a crevice in the room, a cracked floorboard with my toe or something, to understand some part of it better, this room that’ll forever remain unchanging of its core elements. You might think it looks inconsequential, but I’ll be here for the rest of my life. In this room in my mind where I return, this room where I shed the influences of the world and return to the economy of my being. Not in the sense of monetary exchange, but that which parameters my cognitive ecosystem.
But unlike that fictitious place in my mind, for a lot of this year, my body’s lived in a studio apartment in Buenos Aires. Before 2025, I thought I could do it, I could live anywhere, in any context—but I’ve learned that it’s maybe not the case.
The wrong room of my own, in other words, could become the instigator of a loss of self.
I’ve been living with an irregular cockroach infestation, no couch or table, just a small desk, an open bookcase separating two twin beds from a tiny kitchen unit—the whole space seems designed for two college roommates. An anxious ghost is a resident of it too, who during the night occasionally blows my front door open so I sometimes wake up to the sight of a dark hallway. All year, I didn’t invite anyone to my apartment except for my girlfriend on rare occasions and my mother, during the time she visited Argentina. I’m someone who likes to invite people into my space, to share time with them. I also like to wake up early in the mornings to write as I drink a cup of coffee. But this year, I too often abandoned my routine. Hated that I spent most nights at an apartment that wasn’t mine, purely because the one I lived in had no positive attributes except for the air conditioning unit. I felt as if the place where I was supposed to access my own autonomy, my creativity, my freedom—was in fact a prison of its own, one where I felt surveilled by my own unhappiness. There were many chances when I could’ve left, but the rent was too good, I’m lazy about administrative tasks a lot of the time, and still intimidated about navigating systems like the rental market, in a country where I’m not a citizen.
Suffice it to say, I learned I might need more than just any room. Perhaps Woolf assumed that the listener of her lecture was someone who lived in a house owned by a man, whose personal room would be acquired by converting a study or an extra bedroom into a space of solace. Maybe she also meant, once a person has their own studio apartment, autonomy will be right around the corner.
But autonomy from what?
I consider myself relatively well acquainted with the movements of my own thoughts, I know what my preoccupations are. Still, I’ve learned, I can succumb to the banality of an unwelcome room, to such an extent that I lose total focus over my entire sense of self. The wrong room of my own, in other words, could become the instigator of a loss of self. Sometimes this year, I felt so untethered to myself that I would walk the streets with my bag already packed full of the essentials I’d need for the night, already showered—after deciding that I wouldn’t return until the next day, or the day after that. Or a few days after that. I wonder if it’s something that’s been written much about—the reversal of revelation. If so, I’d love recommendations, because I couldn’t find any.
A hundred years after Woolf’s essay, perhaps autonomy is not necessarily contingent on solitude, but on the sense that possibility is imminent.
In many ways, I was a student of feminism before I was aware of how the patriarchy poisons me in everyday life. Before I experienced street harassment, for example, I knew to already be on guard against the world. And before I figured out how to walk through it with integrity, I was determined to do it on my own terms, come what may. I was ready for battle before I knew that ease was the most powerful state of all. And, so is community.
Perhaps it’s not just theory to blame, but the general contradiction of my upbringing too. One where I learned too early that hypervigilance is a useful tool to use when performing belonging. This was the first year of my twenties when I made enough money that I didn’t have to dip into my savings—my work paid for my rent. But eventually, I was forced to confront that in this room of my own, one where I made enough money to afford it, one where I existed with the barest of essentials—I needed to adorn my life with more. A hundred years after Woolf’s essay, perhaps autonomy is not necessarily contingent on solitude, but on the sense that possibility is imminent.
A prison, a hostile home, is no place for dreaming.
Doors into a City
Impulsively, I started doing it. Restlessness was bubbling under my fingertips and when I passed by a door, I stopped. I didn’t know how to explain this impulse, other than that it felt like a need. I moved to Buenos Aires a little more than two years ago now and in the beginning, I was living outside of the capital. A far enough distance away that I passed by cows on the bus rides to town. With every stop along the way, the sheer curtains by the windows fluttered, for a second longer in the air than what I expected.
Whenever I came into town, I’d usually wander the streets a little bit before finding a café or a park or a museum, to sit in for a while and complete my remote work. I treated these walks as cleanses for my brain, even though of course, the atmosphere of the city was much busier than where I was living at that time.
I’m pretty sure it started immediately upon arriving in Buenos Aires, that I started taking pictures of windows, but mostly doors. It was springtime, the light was really beautiful. What I didn’t know before moving here, is that a lot of the doors are absolutely stunning because of the ranges of architectural influences that make up the buildings that populate the city. Sometimes they would be painted in wild colors, be covered in graffiti, or a grate. The experience of walking down the street—seeing architecture that felt like such a snapshot of a moment in time, right next to something very contemporary, then another made entirely out of concrete, alongside posters and graffiti where clearly their artists had run out of paint or the weather disrupted a design—felt kind of like life, a collision of hybridity, a museum of seams. I found taking pictures of doors brought me to a state of calm I’d never felt outside of my mornings of silence, with coffee and words.
Maybe the metaphor of doors as a symbol of beginnings is too tired to write about without resorting to clichés. Wonder, after all, can quickly slip into the saccharine.
But every time I go somewhere else, it’s hard not to explain it as if I’m running from wherever I was, before, to some new question. I too frequently feel overwhelmed by possible answers, so a city often becomes an unwieldy body, stretching towards and away from my own—such that wandering its crevices can feel like I’ve met a companion, with whom I can feel safe to fill whatever holes inside of me I need to nourish. I feel enlivened by how much Buenos Aires exposes itself, the cracks in buildings unattended to, the subway stations, one always under construction, the sounds of nature and industry always yowling, from the northern part of the city to the south. As if this city is constantly making and unmaking itself—wrending past and present and future into a conflagration. The pictures of doors in my phone is evidence of its kaleidoscopic characteristics.
Sometimes rooms can be the entrypoint to a revelation, but there are other ways to find it too. Now, two years into living in a city where I’ve inhabited seven different homes (soon, hopefully eight), I’ve learned that my sense of self isn’t always found by searching for it in isolation from the world. I need to collide with it. Feel in friction with it. Go out for a walk. Perhaps, freedom exists only in spontaneity. Perhaps, as Tanning suggests, it’s a result of movement, of a contradiction, a transformation.
Could there be another way of looking at “Birthday?” As if it’s a site from which transformation occurs once it’s abandoned—rather than, in and of itself, a permanent site in the unconscious from which liberation was to be revisited. Rooms, when occupied for long periods of time, require maintenance, cleaning, upkeep, care. Perhaps earlier, I was wrong to think that the room in my mind I’ve designed will be the same all of my life—perhaps, thinking that way’s been the obstacle all along. My childhood desire for consistency (one I still thought to be true but in fact, isn’t), impeded my actual taste for an inconstant, effervescent life. Was this also what Woolf was suggesting? The possibility that once we’ve had the experience of inhabiting our own mind and educating ourselves about how to build a room of our own, we’ll be in command of the tools we need to build future ones which better reflect our true selves—spaces where we can invite other people in, too.
Featured image:
Birthday, 1942. Dorothea Tanning. Philadelphia Art Museum: 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Purchased with funds contributed by C. K. Williams, II, 1999-50-1 © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
