Queen

A single-word title leaves the referent open: Queen could indicate a regal figure, a chess piece, a queen bee, or any of the figurative or vernacular meanings the word carries. Given that May's 2023 etching Never Miss the Honey reads as part of an apian thread running through her work, a beekeeping interpretation is plausible — the queen as the colony's reproductive center, sustained by the workers depicted obliquely elsewhere in the body of work. As an etching, the image is built from acid-bitten lines whose density can be modulated through repeated bites, allowing fine textural distinctions between, for example, a chitinous body, gauzy wings, and surrounding cell structure. Across her practice, May has used the etched line to investigate identity and the conventions surrounding artistic production; a print titled Queen, treated through the conventions of natural-history illustration but executed in a contemporary intaglio idiom, extends that interest by activating the historical association between scientific copperplate engraving and the construction of authoritative knowledge about female bodies.