Vanja Bućan created her Birds of Paradise series during the pandemic, when she was suddenly trapped inside and began mulling over questions circling around the social construction of gender, the meaning of motherhood and the role of women in the home. Bućan’s photo collages depict women suspended in fictitious urban environments as well as abstract compositions at the dining table – a nod to women’s traditional banishment to the kitchen and to housework. At the same time, they’re also a personal reflection on woman’s role as housewife and primary childcare provider. Bućan’s works merely hint at the oppressive relationship between women and housework; they comment on complex social situations with subtlety and humour. Just as ‘birds of paradise’ belong to a fictional ‘paradise’, women are coerced into a world of domestic labour. In their cropped form, the artist’s photographs of hands and bodies in natural surroundings suggest imaginary communities and utopian scenarios.