Candace Hicks creates interactive installations and artist’s books that examine gender, voice, and parallel universes through the analysis of fictional literature. Believing that the stories we tell each other can reveal more about our beliefs and biases than mundane experience, Hicks mines genre fictions to uncover the subtle ways that literature reflects inequalities. She assigns works of fiction the status of alternate realities in which connections spring from the attention of the reader. Her recent project, Many Mini Murder Scenes, a series of dioramas, offer viewers the experience of playing a detective searching for clues. Rather than solving crimes, viewers unveil the darker side of murder mysteries. Though men are much more likely to die as a result of violence than women, young women remain the preferred victims in crime novels. As Edgar Allen Poe famously said, “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” The spectacle of female death, evident in the way female bodies are discovered in fiction, usually displayed, sometimes erotically, perpetuates the objectification of women unto death. With humor and engagement Hicks’ allows an exploration of these and other scenes in the miniature domestic spaces that expose so much of the ugly side of life.