The female experience is a central theme in Heidi Hahn’s work. The figures in her paintings are shown in everyday situations in public or private spaces occupied exclusively by women. In a world without men, Hahn’s women are disencumbered from a patriarchal social order, one mediated by the male gaze and its potential for sexual objectification. Burn Out in Shredded Heaven 1 depicts a retail setting rendered in bright oranges and pinks suggesting the warmth of a safe space. The principal figure, a shopper with purse strapped to her side, enters the picture from the left to join other women, as the artist notes, “in their own psychological space and not dealing with the male gaze at all.”