Visualising Little Red Riding Hood

In recent years contemporary artists have been appropriating and re-inventing traditional fairy tales. Subverting and interrogating received meanings, artists are challenging the traditional parameters of tales which convey ideas of gender role and racial identity. The fairy tale is being translated from literary text into visual culture. The artists recoding the tales address shifts in cultural attitude, engaging predominantly with issues of identity and discrimination. In this paper I examine the visual development of “Little Red Riding Hood,” investigating the manner in which the literary tale has been adopted by contemporary artists, how the visual responds to the textual, and cultural attitudes embedded in reiterations of the tale.