Lily Bunney and Elleanna Chapman

Norma Jeane (Us and Them) (2026)

watercolour, paper, rhinestones, glue, marker pen

22.5 by 42.5 by 1 centimetres

exhibited as part of Office with Teaspoon Projects at Basel Social Club, Basel, Switzerland

exhibition documentation by Silke Briel

Norma Jeane (Us and Them) is a collaborative work by Lily Bunney and Elleanna Chapman, reworking a photograph of Marilyn Monroe dressed as a sailor following her employment in a wartime factory. Together, the artists selected and cropped the image to focus on Monroe's eye, before the full construction of her Hollywood persona, positioning her between worker and icon, labour and spectacle.

Bunney's watercolour painting is overlaid with Chapman's rhinestones, applied directly to the framing glass to create a single composite image. Concealed within Monroe's pupil are the words ‘us and them’, referencing the class divide between worker and boss, as well as the left-wing politics of a woman so often dismissed as a ‘dumb blonde’. Rising from poverty to become one of Hollywood's most recognisable stars, Monroe was an outspoken supporter of civil rights, sympathetic to revolutionary Cuba and opposed to McCarthyism. She also challenged the industry's control over her labour and image, founding Marilyn Monroe Productions in 1955 in pursuit of greater autonomy from the studio system.

By bringing Monroe's working-class beginnings and political convictions into conversation with her manufactured celebrity image, Bunney and Chapman expose the hierarchies of labour, class and power that persist beneath Hollywood's glamorous facade.