This Artist Uses Destruction To Rethink History And Memory (30 Pics)

Hegarty’s practice often begins with something personal, but it quickly expands into a broader conversation with art history and current events. Her pieces echo traditional American paintings and antique objects, yet they are deliberately altered—burned, cracked, or overtaken by natural forces. This tension creates an uncanny effect, where viewers are caught between recognition and surprise.

One of her most intriguing approaches is what she calls “reverse archaeology.” Instead of digging into the past, Hegarty builds up layers, covering walls and surfaces with painted paper, only to scrape them away. The result is a kind of material memory, where traces of what once was remain embedded in the space, like echoes refusing to disappear.

The artist shared in the interview with Bored Panda that people take away from her artworks that cultural ideals—especially those tied to beauty, history, and nature—are not fixed or pristine, but constructed, unstable, and subject to decay.  

Asked which piece feels especially meaningful to her, Hegarty noted "Death Mask with Sparrow" since she had an early cancer diagnosis in 2017 and had to grapple with questions about her mortality.

"I love this piece because as the sparrow is being tricked by the illusionistic painting of the moth, it's pulling at the canvas stretches the skull into a mask," the artist shared and explained that there is the implication that death is an illusion also.

"I think of the activity of the birds in the springtime as bringing life to the painting about death. There is a humor to the work that I enjoy, letting us laugh at this image of death."

In Hegarty's Reclining Shells series, conch shells are melded to the reclining legs of classical nudes in art history. The artist explained that she wanted the form to be both sensual and uncanny.

"The shell’s opening, positioned between the legs, evokes female anatomy, linking natural forms to art history’s tradition of the Venus. The work shifts from idealized beauty toward a more visceral, embodied presence," she explained and added that it's meant to make the viewer uncomfortable, as if revealing the real subject of the male gaze that is hidden behind the aesthetics.

"The piece questions how femininity, desire, and the female body have been constructed and objectified over time."