Eliana Willis

A sprawling exhibition dedicated to one of the most legendary living artists, David Hockney, is set to open at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this spring. With over 400 works dating from 1955 until the present day, among the highlights will be two new works inspired by the artists Edvard Munch and William Blake.
“This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had,” said Hockney in a press statement, noting that his works will fill 11 galleries at the foundation. “I think it’s going to be very good.”
The artist and his partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, have been personally involved in organizing “David Hockney 25,” which runs from April 9 through September 1, 2025. As we have come to expect of the British painter, whose exploratory approach to medium has readily evolved with the times, the show will include a wide variety of media from pencil and charcoal drawings to digital compositions worked on an iPad and even immersive installations.
David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968). Photo: Fabrice Gibert, © David Hockney.
Hockney’s lengthy career has taken him from his native city of Bradford in Yorkshire to London, Paris, Los Angeles, and, more recently, a peaceful farmhouse in Normandy. The 87-year-old artist has now resettled in London and is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, some of the works going into the show won’t even feature in the catalogue because they are still in the works.
With his trademark vibrant palette, imbuing his compositions with an eye-catching, hallucinatory quality, the artist has embarked on a new series of paintings that pay homage to some of the historical greats. On view will be After Munch: Less is Known than People Think (2023) and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think (2024), both works that take an impressively expansive view of our world today and realms that lie far beyond, invoking history, our future, and astronomy. In After Munch, the three graces hold up the world while an ancient philosopher meets our gaze.
David Hockney, After Blake: Less is Known that People Think (2024). Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson, © David Hockney.
Yet, these ambiguous pieces are, ultimately, humble observations about human naivety. Their titles were inspired by a headline Hockney saw in the New York Times around 2000 that read: “Less is known than people think.”
“I thought it was a gem, of course they don’t know much!” explained Hockney in the book Spring Cannot Be Cancelled by Martin Gayford. “Nobody knows anything.”
The acrylic painting After Blake was inspired by Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who Guards the Entrance of Purgatory, one of the 18th century English poet and artist William Blake‘s interpretations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The marvels of 14th and 15th century Florence have clearly captured Hockney’s imagination for many decades, since the show will include a little known work Renaissance Head from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It was painted in 1960s, just after Hockney graduated from the Royal College of Art.
David Hockney, 27th March 2020, No. 1 iPad painting printed on paper. Photo: © David Hockney.
Hockney has long introduced art historical references into his work, as will be obvious on the exhibition’s top floor. There will hang The Great Wall (2000), a collage of reproductions of some of the artist’s all-time favorite artworks from the early Renaissance onwards. Other nods to Hockney’s inspirations will come in the form of an installation that reimagines the artist’s studio as a dance hall, a reference to the regular musical performances he stages at his own home, and new reinterpretations of opera set designs originally made by Hockney in the 1970s.
Fans of Hockney’s quintessential subjects—swimming pools, interiors, characterful landscapes, and sensitive portraits of friends, family, or fellow artists—will find plenty of these classics on view. These include Portrait of My Father (1955), Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968), Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), and A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998). The more recent Normandy landscapes, many of which were completed during lockdown, will also fill two galleries on the foundation’s 1st floor. More

“Color is bullshit,” the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once told his younger colleague, William Eggleston. Less vulgar but equally dismissive, Ansel Adams once likened photographing in color (though he did plenty of it) to playing an out-of-tune piano, and claimed that he could get “a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [he had] ever achieved with color photography.”
William Wegman, Ski Patrol (2017). Courtesy Galerie George-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois.
Indeed, color photography had a hard time of it after it was first developed in the mid-19th century, with critics and connoisseurs terming its seductive colors garish as opposed to the supposedly more dignified black and white. But that’s long since changed, and color photography is presently widely accepted, in fine art, fashion, journalism and other fields.
Walter Chandoha, New Jersey, 1962. ©️ Walter Chandoha Archive.
Now, multihyphenate artist Maurizio Cattelan has curated an exhibition on color photography along with Sam Stourdzé, director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis. It’s taking place at that Renaissance villa just moments away from the famed Spanish Steps in the heart of the Italian capital, which was once the residence of Cardinal Ferdinando I de’ Medici and home to the Academy since 1803.
The show presents the work of some 20 artists, broken up into what the curators call “chapters,” with titles like Early Birds, Raining Cats and Dogs, Femme Fatale, and Stranger Things. On the roster are Miles Aldridge, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Juno Calypso, Walter Chandoha, Harold Edgerton, Hassan Hajjaj, Hiro, Ouka Leele, Yevonde Middleton, Arnold Odermatt, Ruth Ossai, Martin Parr, Pierre et Gilles, Alex Prager, Adrienne Raquel, Sandy Skoglund, Toiletpaper (the magazine established by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari), and William Wegman.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Toiiletpaper. Courtesy Toiletpaper.
“What if color could save us?” said Stourdzé in an email. “In a world of grey where the clouds seem to be pilling up, this exhibition invites you to a chromotherapy session featuring lemon yellow, limitless blue, vibrant red, and sunshine orange.” 
Animals are frequent subjects. Wegman is perhaps best known for his photos of his Weimaraners in various poses, sometimes sporting human clothes. Chandoha, by contrast, is known as a cat photographer; of his archive of more than 225,000 photos, some 90,000 depict felines. “Cats are my favorite animal subject,” he said, “because of their unlimited range of attitude, posture, expression, and coloration.” A charming photo of his shows a furry specimen perched atop three stacked pillows; another shows a quartet in a loving embrace.
The back cover of Damiani’s catalogue for the exhibition “Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography,” featuring a photo by Walter Chandoha.
Food also comes in for close study, for example in Martin Paar’s Common Sense [Donut, Ramsgate] (1999), a delightful shot of a child’s hands, poking out of brilliant red jacket cuffs, grasping a sugary treat, and Juno Calypso’s Chicken Dogs (2015), showing a model mysteriously lying face-down on a tile floor near a can of the titular food item, one dog tentatively poking out above the rim. 
Juno Calypso, Chicken Dogs, 2015.
Can’t make it to the show? Villa Medici will publish a 224-page book with Damiani, priced at €55, that will be available in U.K. bookstores in March for £50 ($61) and in the States in May at $60. 
“Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography” will be on view at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis, Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1, February 28–June 9. More

In the 1980s, in lieu of a wedding ring, French sculptor Bernar Venet bent and looped a thin silver band around the ring finger of his soon-to-be-wife Diane. It was a playful, spontaneous act, but one that kindled in its recipient a fascination with artist-crafted jewelry. As she recalled, it drew her toward “the too-little-known world of these unique objets d’art, priceless for their rarity, and the symbolic meaning that is often the genesis of their creation.”
Over the next three decades, Diane Venet would build one of the most enviable collections of artist jewelry, numbering upwards of 220 pieces. Among them are creations by Dalí, Picasso, Braque, Lichtenstein, and Koons, as well as some others commissioned by Venet herself. So vast is the collector’s trove that it’s filled exhibitions, notably at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design in 2011 and Paris’s Les Arts Décoratifs in 2018, among other shows.
Salvador Dalí, Montre petite cuillère (1957). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philippe Servent, Collection Diane Venet.
It’s now set for another outing, at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida, in April. The exhibition, titled “Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop,” will see more than 150 objects from Venet’s collection displayed alongside companion works by the same artists, pulled from the museum’s holdings.
“Diane Venet’s collection is second to none,” said Ghislain d’Humières, the museum’s director and CEO, in a statement. “The necklaces, rings, brooches, earrings, headpieces, and more that she has collected feature incredible details rendered in interesting materials by some of the most famous artists of our time.”
Pablo Picasso, Le Grand Faune (1973). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Sherry Griffin, Collection Diane Venet
Gathered here is a veritable who’s who of modern and contemporary art. Jean Cocteau and Picasso offer parallel gold recreations of a human face on a brooch and pendant respectively; Niki de Saint Phalle’s signature Nana figure is reimagined in gold and multi-colored enamel; Dalí has similarly installed his trademark clock on the head of a hair brooch.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Nana Ange (1991). Courtesy of the artist. Collection Diane Venet.
Elsewhere are rings by Frank Stella, Lowell Nesbitt, and Rashid Johnson, as well as a bracelet by Lucio Fontana and a rare geometric necklace by Meret Oppenheim, one of only nine produced.
The line-up, noted the museum, boasts artists who were prolific jewelry makers like Calder as much as those who created one-of-a-kind works, including Stella. These pieces also bear out a diversity of craftsmanship—some are dotted with precious stones, some created out of hammered metals, while others were made from non-traditional materials (see John Chamberlain’s aluminum and paint design).
John Chamberlain, Untitled (1998). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philippe Gontier, Collection Diane Venet.
“Since the beginning of humanity, individuals have adorned themselves with fine metals and precious stones—as modes of class distinction and personal expression,” said J. Rachel Gustafson, the museum’s chief curatorial operations and research officer. “This exhibition bridges the gap between craft and fine art, two creative forms that seldom intersect or are interpreted within one exhibition.”
Man Ray, Optic Topic (1974). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Alain Leprince, Collection Diane Venet.
Woven through these objects, too, are personal narratives, particularly Venet’s. Man Ray’s sculptural mask, Optic Topic (1974), one of the show’s centerpieces, was snapped up by Venet for her husband. Originally conceived as a pair of gold sunglasses, the Dada pioneer’s final design instead obscures its wearer’s vision, giving new meaning to the word “mask.” Throughout the show are also gems that emerge from Venet’s friendship with artists including Stella and Rauschenberg, from whom she received an avant-garde brooch. The coiled wedding ring she received from Bernar is included here, too.
These displays will be accompanied by paintings, sculptures, and photographs to further contextualize the objects, and a sound-based work by Sheila Concari, which features audio snippets of Venet’s reflections on her remarkable collection.
Bernar Venet, Indeterminate Line (1985). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Damian Noszkowicz, Collection Diane Venet.
“The story of this collection is largely that of my friendships in the art world over the past 40 years,” said Venet in a statement. “In my rather itinerant life, this collection of jewelry is thus an intimate museum that I can take everywhere with me and the treasure trove which I can find on my return home.”
“Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop, the Diane Venet Collection” is on view at the Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, Florida, April 12–October 5. More

The Venus de Milo, a celebrated ancient statue found on the Greek island of Milos and displayed at the Louvre since 1821, is one of the most famous artworks in the world. Yet relatively little is known about the many centuries of artistic output on Milos and its surrounding islands, known as the Cyclades. In bringing to light this veritable treasure trove of antiquities and artifacts, the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens is also spearheading new research into the rich historical insights these objects have to offer.
Installation view statues of Delos-born goddess Artemis in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
This is certainly the case of a new exhibition “Kyladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades,” currently on view until May 4, which uses art as a lens through which to learn more about the lives of the women who, over many generations, inhabited the sunny Cyclades, an archipelago of hundreds of islands including Mykonos, Thera (Santorini), and Ios. Some 180 statues and figurines dating from prehistory to the middle ages represent women in many guises, from goddesses, religious icons, mothers, entrepreneurs, and sex workers, all bonded by their resilience within a deeply patriarchal society.
“We were disappointed,” one of the show’s curators Panagiotis Iossif said of researching for the exhibition. “Women’s positions never improved dramatically, they were never unmarginalized. Ideas like feminism and equality are very modern.” However, despite laws and social norms that severely limited women’s autonomy, “Kyladitisses” shows that they still found ways to be influential in ancient Greek society.
Installation view statues of Delos-born goddess Artemis in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
The idea that women were inferior to men was a widely held belief in ancient Greek society, and one that would go on to influence Western culture for many centuries thanks in large part to the musings of Aristotle, who wrote in Politics, “the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject.” Women were excluded from public life in ancient Greece, including all formal political positions. However, there is evidence that through their close familial ties to men in power, elite women were able to exert some influence behind the scenes.
Despite these restrictions, women were permitted to participate in religious ceremonies and festivals. This was particularly true for those designated as priestesses within cults of female deities, like Athena, Demeter, or Artemis. These women organized and oversaw important public events, a huge civic responsibility.
Installation view terracotta ‘korai’ statues from Kea in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
Particularly popular in the Cyclades was the Thesmorphoria, a three-day festival celebrated by the cult of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. It was an opportunity to leave the domestic sphere, with women coming together to fill communal spaces in this celebration of fertility and renewal. At festivals dedicated to Artemis, young girls underwent rituals intended to commemorate their transition to womanhood. For example, those participating in the arkteia rite would dance around the altar and sometimes imitate bears to appease Artemis, who was thought to oversee a young woman’s journey through puberty to first childbirth.
Outside of these ceremonies, women were principally charged with managing the home, which might include supervising household slaves and budgeting to ensure the house is well stocked. In ancient Greek, women were severely restricted from participating in the economy by law, but there is some evidence of exceptions when it comes to working-class women. While textile production was a common pastime for all women, as evidenced by depictions on vases and spindle-whorls and loom weights unearthed by archaeologists, working-class women would sometimes support their families by selling their wares. There are surviving accounts from the Cyclades that record women selling perfumes and textiles, most often in the late Hellenistic and Roman period.
Fresco of the Women in the adyton (“Adorants”) from Xeste 3, Akrotiri of Thera, ca 1600 BCE. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
So how did life change for women living in the Cyclades over the centuries? The exhibition contains Neolithic Cycladic figurines, of which the vast majority depict the female rather than male body, often in an abstracted or stylized manner. They are generally understood as reinforcing the association between women and fertility, survival, and the cyclic nature of life. It is not known whether they are by men or women, but either or both may be possible since society at this time was less organized and stratified.
By the Bronze Age, Cycladic marble figurines were often found buried in tombs, perhaps intended to provide protection in the afterlife. A rare glimpse into the role of women during this time is provided by the frescoes of Akrotiri, which were preserved under volcanic ash. We can make out several female figures apparently participating in a rite-of-passage ceremony in a particularly notable fresco know as “Adorants,” which is included in the show. This reflects the important role that women would continue to play in ancient Greek religious festivals.
Installation view religious icons featuring the Virgin Mary in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
“To the degree that our sources allow us to catch glimpses of the life of women in the Cyclades, we observe a progressive visibility of women from the Hellenistic period onwards,” said Greek and Roman antiquities expert Sophia Zoumbaki in an essay for the exhibition’s catalogue. “Gender barriers were present throughout antiquity, but the women took advantage of every opportunity they were given in order to participate in the events of the community—mainly in the religious sphere–but also to make ends meet in financial affairs, to manage property, to cope with the unstinting daily work at home, and on the estates.”
At the exhibition’s opening last month, Greece’s culture minister Lina Mendoni praised how it “brings together two very timely issues – one is women’s position internationally and through time and civilizations, the second is an island identity. Island identity is the one that defines – and defined from prehistoric times to our time – the progress and historical development of these specific islands.”
Installation view of religious icons featuring the Virgin Mary and a marble votive relief of Isis Pelagia, lady of the seas, in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
The exhibition is the first initiative to emerge from a landmark deal signed last year by the Museum of Cycladic Art and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, a regional office of the Greek ministry of culture, with the aim of promoting Cycladic art at home and internationally.
Sandra Mariopoulou, museum’s president and CEO, noted to local press that it is “the first pan-Cycladic show that has ever been set up: a historic exhibition, as it is the first time it collects so many outstanding works of the Cycladic Islands in one place.”
“Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” is on view at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4, after which it will travel to the newly renovated Archaeological Museum of Thera on Santorini for its reopening this summer. It will be followed at the Museum of Cycladic Art by “Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues” from June 5 until November 3, 2025.  More

Marcel Proust’s masterwork In Search of Lost Time, published in seven volumes from 1913 through 1927, is as much a rumination on the slip and slide of time as it is a time capsule. In it is bottled high society in early 20th-century France—its salons, seaside getaways, tea cakes, and of course, visual art. Proust, in fact, name-dropped some 100 artists throughout his famed tome, from Botticelli and Leonardo to Whistler and Vermeer, giving color to characters’ lives both inner and outer.
“It is only through art,” he wrote in the book’s sixth volume, The Fugitive, “that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any there may be on the moon.”
Paul César Helleu, Interior View of Reims Cathedral (c. 1892). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
And what might the French author’s own landscapes look like? A forthcoming show at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain, is giving Proust the Proust treatment by using art to bring his aesthetic ideas and thematic obsessions to life.
Proust’s Paris was undergoing a tremendous transformation at the turn of the century, one that reshaped its industry and urban infrastructure and gave a boost to its art and culture scenes. That ambient modernity was reflected in the author’s prose, but so was Impressionism, which guided how Proust described his scenes and sensations. He ranked Monet and Vermeer among his favorite painters, while socializing with the artists of the day, including Picasso and Jean Cocteau.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge (1859–63). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
“Proust and the Arts” vivifies this milieu with artworks that capture Proust’s aesthetic meanderings across Europe. There’s Whistler’s rendering of London’s Battersea Bridge and Paul César Helleu’s color-spotted oil of the interior of the Reims Cathedral in Paris. Proust’s fascination with Venice, sparked by his first reading of John Ruskin around 1899, is also given play here, particularly his love for Italian gothic architecture.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies (1916–19). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
A number of artists who Proust referenced in his oeuvre feature as well. They include Rembrandt, Pissarro, Renoir, Fantin-Latour, and Manet; an iteration of water lilies by Monet, of course, will turn up. Vermeer, another Proust fave, will be represented by his 1653–54 work Diana and her Nymphs (alas, no View of Delft, in front of which the author staged a dramatic death scene in The Captive).
The show also draws out Proust’s connections with the theater and fashion worlds. A Georges Clarin painting of Sarah Bernhardt will be featured, highlighting how the author based Lost Time‘s Berma on the famed actor; as will costumes created by Spanish artist Mariano Fortuny, whose designs inspired the fashions of Proust’s Duchesse de Guermantes, evoking “that Venice loaded with the gorgeous East.”
JMW Turner, Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
These artifacts will be accompanied by a selection of the author’s books, some on loan from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Among them is Pleasures and Days (1896), his first published volume, its short stories reflecting his tastes in art and his regular visits to the Louvre.
Not least, Proust stans will rightly rejoice at the inclusion of James Tissot’s The Circle of the Rue Royale (1866). The painting is one of the many Proust brings up in his celebrated tome—with a twist. With it, he reveals that his protagonist Charles Swann was based on the very real figure of Charles Haas, a man about town.
James Tissot, The Circle of the Rue Royale (1866). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
“If, in Tissot’s picture representing the balcony of the Rue Royale club, when you figure with Galliffet, Edmond de Polignac, and Saint-Maurice, people are always drawing attention to you, it is because they see that there are some traces of you in the character of Swann,” Proust wrote in the book’s fifth volume, The Prisoner. In Tissot’s work, you’ll find Haas on the right, looking suitably self-assured.
“Proust and the Arts” is on view at Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, P.º del Prado, 8, Centro, Madrid, Spain, March 4–June 8. More

At first sight, Emma Ferrer’s paintings are serene, if slightly melancholic, ones. Her skies are alive with shades of blues, pinks, and grays, her landscapes golden and textured with gestural brushstrokes. Closer inspection, however, reveals a sense of disquiet in these scenes. A dog runs down a village road leaving behind bloody paw prints; a mountain goat on a dirt mound gazes ruefully at a retreating figure; a younger goat lies prone on a red mat, teetering, it seems, between sleep and death.
“I almost feel like some things are too gruesome or shocking to paint,” she told me during a walkthrough of the exhibition. “I don’t want them to have that shock factor, but I want them to have a very subtle eeriness.”
Emma Ferrer, A Humble Return (2024). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
Ferrer’s paintings are making their debut at New York’s Sapar Contemporary, in “The Scapegoat.” The show brings together works she recently created in her studio in Tuscany, for which she had decamped after a six-year spell in New York. In tone and tenor, the art bears out the solitude and untamed nature of her Italian outpost, woven with nods to the region’s storied art history.
Emma Ferrer, Agnus Dei (2024). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
While her art is making its first appearance on the scene, the artist herself is no stranger to the spotlight. Ferrer is the granddaughter of Hollywood legend Audrey Hepburn (her father is Hepburn and actor Mel Ferrer’s son, Sean)—a relationship that has kindled breathless press coverage over the years, including her outing at age 20 on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.
Ferrer never got to meet her celebrated grandmother, who died a year before her birth in 1994, and coming to grips with her legacy, she said, was a process.
“I spent a lot of my life feeling like I didn’t know how to live up to that. But I have reached a place where I’m incredibly proud to be the granddaughter of Audrey Hepburn,” she reflected. “It’s a part of my identity and a lot of my life experiences. There’s no point in trying to hide it. It’s part of my journey.”
Emma Ferrer. Photo: Filbert T. Kung.
Ferrer’s journey so far has taken her from Switzerland, where she was born, though Los Angeles, where she spent some of her childhood, and Italy, where she attended the Florence Academy of Art. Along the way, she earned her BA at SUNY Empire in New York and her MFA at Central Saint Martins in London. In the late 2010s, she was back in New York working as a curator and art liaison (she interned at Sapar Contemporary, too), until the lockdowns hit.
At that time, Ferrer told me, she was likewise hit with a desire to return to nature—to be “in the environment that I realize now feeds my practice.” She departed the city and set up a studio in the Apuan Alps, where she was joined by her two herding dogs, Orso and Lilla.
“I really, really love to be alone,” she said. “I still work remotely, in design PR, but ultimately, having that space, time, and quietness is really what allowed me to just pour myself into my practice.”
Sapar’s co-founder Nina Levent concurs, telling me of Ferrer’s resulting paintings: “There was no prelude. This work could not have happened in New York.”
Emma Ferrer, L’abbandono (Abandonment) (2024). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
Indeed, “The Scapegoat” is riven throughout with ancient lore and practices in ways that seem of another world. The exhibition’s title—and its centerpiece—takes its cue from the Old Testament ritual of the scapegoat, animals either slaughtered or sent out into the wilderness to expel all of humanity’s sins. But notably, it also harks back to William Holman Hunt’s masterwork, The Scapegoat (1854–55)—which Ferrer said she became “obsessed” with—and Francisco de Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei (c. 1635–40). “This whole concept crystallized around those paintings,” said Ferrer.
At the gallery are Ferrer’s haunting interpretation of these brutal, age-old rituals, some of them created on rustic jute and hand-primed linen canvases.
Emma Ferrer, The Scapegoat (2024). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
The Scapegoat (2024), a response to Hunt, places the wounded animal on barren ground, its sad fate made plain by roiling brushwork and doleful drops of rain. You Will Return the Evil to its Steppe (Homage to Zurbarán) (2024) references a pre-Assyrian rite of spitting into a frog’s mouth before piercing its feet with rose thorns in order to cure a sickness. Ferrer’s beautifully rendered scene depicts her wistful frog staining an otherwise bucolic field with its bloodied feet, the landscape encircled by a painted wooden frame adorned with dying flowers.
This relationship between humans and animals also surfaces in more everyday tableaux such as A Humble Return (2024) and Lost in the Mountains (2024). They capture the sights of the Tuscan countryside, particularly its hunting culture, Ferrer noted, while hinting at more complex questions.
Emma Ferrer, You Will Return the Evil to its Steppe (Homage to Zurbarán) (2024). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
“The animal has trusted humans, and there’s this betrayal of trust,” she said of these sacrificial practices. “Why do people do this thing in the name of God? Where is God for that animal? Does the animal perceive God in those final moments? I am trying to give the sense of this higher power. I don’t intend to be persuasive at all with my work. I’m just raising questions that go back basically to the beginning of men.”
Ferrer’s deft hand is also on view here. Her Newborn Scapegoat (2024) offers a disorienting perspective of the Terrazza Mascagni in Livorno, the surreal vista heightened by the presence of the titular newborn. Her rendering of physical and emotional depth, such as the placid body of water in At Sea (2024), is delicately achieved.
“This is an unusual body of work,” said Levent, who commended Ferrer for making such an ancient narrative her own. “I think this is something authentic; an artist finds the theme or the theme finds the artist.”
Emma Ferrer, Newborn Scapegoat (2024). Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary and the artist.
The artist and theme having met, the show is a confident one. Ferrer’s is a keen artistic voice—one she hopes will resonate.
“I don’t want the works to be overly obscure. I don’t want their concepts to be alienating,” she said. “If someone can just access these deeper questions that I’ve asked, if a person can find that personal connection to the work, then it’s done its job.”
Emma Ferrer with At Sea (2024). Photo: Filbert T. Kung.
In other ways, too, she hopes it honors her grandmother’s legacy.
During our conversation, she detailed the research Hepburn embarked on for her roles in such films as The Nun’s Story (1959) and Wait Until Dark (1967): “It’s interesting, from an artistic point of view, to see how she poured herself into roles that aren’t Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The artist’s own deep dives into ancient history, it appears, have an antecedent. Ferrer is also a national ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a role that sees her continuing Hepburn’s tireless advocacy with UNICEF.
“I would like to get to a place where I can marry those worlds and continue that legacy with my artistic practice,” Ferrer said. “As I’ve gotten older, I understand more what she meant to so many people. It’s a privilege that this has landed on me. I feel the best way to honor her is by continuing to be myself.”
“The Scapegoat” is on view at Sapar Contemporary, 9 North Moore Street, New York, through February 15. More

Standing in front of the entrance to the exhibition “Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists” at a high-ceiling basement gallery of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, I felt a spark of exhilaration that jolted me. Finally, an exhibition dedicated to Asian women artists! But why has it taken so long?
Perhaps it was worth the wait, as the historical context gives the show a lot more weight. Featuring around 130 works by some 60 Asian women artists from 11 countries and territories across East, South, and Southeast Asia—Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and India—”Connecting Bodies” surveys works from the 1960s, when women’s art began to emerge in the region, through today.
Certainly, names such as Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Lee Bul, and Cao Fei are no strangers to the global art world today. But what about those in-between, and those who have not been receiving the same level of exposure internationally or even regionally? How are they different? Do they share a common ground?
Kim Insoon, Begging for a Job as a Woman Student (1995). Photo: Vivienne Chow
An ambitious and expansive exhibition like this offers a great opportunity to examine these artists and their practices while reflecting on the transformation experienced over the past six decades. This period, coincidentally, corresponds to the sexagenary cycle that forms the foundation of the lunisolar calendar that is still widely used in many parts of Asia. In a way, the opening of this exhibition signifies the return to the starting point of this 60-year cycle, an appropriate time to review and contextualize the rich materials from the past to present.
Going through the exhibition occupying two galleries located on the museum’s basement level, it was not hard to notice the theme of “bodies” on display, quite literally. From the image of Korean artist Jung Kangja’s iconic performance The Transparent Balloons and Nude (1968), the country’s first known female nude performance that saw the artist covering her naked body with transparent balloons, to Philippine artist Agnes Arellano’s surrealist sculpture Carcass Cornucopia (1987), which depicts the body of a woman with horse feet hung upside down, with her torso ripped apart revealing a baby sitting inside, and the charming video work Dance with Farm Workers (2001) by Chinese artist Wen Hui, bodies are not just part of a work, but also a conduit and a point of convergence.
Chung Chanseung, Jung Kangja, and Kang Kukjin, The Transparent Balloons and Nude (1968). Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Works selected for this project live up to the expectations outlined by Bae Myungji, MMCA’s curator who also curated this ambitious show, which “focuses on the values of communication, connection, and solidarity associated with the body.” It explores works “through the lens of corporeality,” the curator said. “The body is a place where various ideologies and situations intersect, and it also represents a locus where one can explore the existential possibilities of difference and diversity.”
Rather than organizing works in chronological order and categorizing works and artists by region, the show is made up of six thematic sections, with each featuring a selection of works to echo the respective theme, each punctuated by bold works and rarely seen pieces.
Atsuko Tanaka, Gate of Hell (1965-1969). Photo: Vivienne Chow
Section one, titled “Choreograph Life,” highlights works responding to socio-political conditions through women’s bodily experiences, addressing the changing roles of women. Included in the section are Japanese artist Mako Idemitsu’s video works Woman’s House (1972) and Another Day of Housewife (1977), Korean artist Ryu Jun Hwa’s politically-charged paintings Red Flesh (1992) and The Fall of America (1992), and the late Filipino artist Brenda Fajardo’s whimsical commentaries on migrant workers from her country depicted in Tarot Card Series, her works on paper comprised of Pilipina, Entertainer in Japan (1993), Pilipina, Domestic Helper in Hong Kong (1993), and Pilipina, Not Documented in Taiwan (1993).
“Flexible Territories of Sexuality,” which the museum says is not suitable for those aged under 19, is filled with provocative works that challenge the social norms of sexuality, a topic traditionally considered as a taboo across many parts of Asia. Women’s body plays a key role in many pieces on show, such as Japanese artist Shigeko Kubota’s 1965 performance Vagina Painting, where the artist is seen crouching on the floor, painting with a brush held between her legs, depicted in a black and white photograph. Quirky narrative video pieces Love Condition and Love Condition II by Mai Endo x Aya Momose exploring sex, love, and more were delightful to watch. Kusama’s 1967 avant-garde video piece Self Obliteration can also be found here.
Wen Hui, 100 Verbs (1994). Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Chinese artist Guo Fengyi’s drawings from late 1990s to 2000s referencing the intersections between humans and beings of a higher realm set the tone for “Bodies · God(desse)s · Cosmology.” Paintings by artists such as Pacita Abad from the Philippines, Kim Insoon from Korea, and Fitriani Dwi Kurniasih from Indonesia explore femininity borrowing images from folklores and mythologies.
“Street Performances” is a collage of rare documentation of important performances by women artists from past to present. The show concludes with “Bodies as Becoming–Connecting Bodies,” dedicated to works that transcend the rigid boundaries and hierarchies that have long marginalized women. Among the highlights are Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video work The Class (2005) and Korean artist Kim Nahee’s newly commissioned illustration and video installation piece Gossip Girl Protocol (2024).
Agnes Arellano, Carcass Cornucorpia (1987). Photo: Vivienne Chow
Does this presentation structure work? It is without a doubt a mountainous effort to sift through the materials and to identify overarching narrative threads to connect all the dots. After all, besides the fact that these are all women artists and their art emerged throughout the chaotic post-colonial eras and struggle with various degrees of democratization, they are all rooted in places with vastly different cultural, historical, and geopolitical contexts. Generalizing them as one will simply be factually incorrect.
While the categorization may be arbitrary at times, it was a worthwhile experiment as it creates solidarity among the artists on view, though it may be confusing to those who are not well-versed in the region’s contexts and aesthetics.
Bharti Kher, And All the while the Benevolent Slept (2008). Photo: Vivienne Chow.
The configuration of space was problematic in some instances. For example, in the section “Flexible Territories of Sexuality,” there was an impression of an uneven allocation of space where some works that needed more space were cramped in a room while others were left surrounded with slightly too much emptiness. Nevertheless, confining Taiwanese artist Joyce Ho’s mesmerizing five-channel video installation Vera x Diary (2023) in one room as part of section five’s “Repeating Gestures–Bodies · Objects · Language” was an interesting move. Watching the performer trying to hide herself some weird corners of an apartment made it very difficult to walk away from that room.
“Connecting Bodies” is nonetheless an important show, despite its flaws, and I carried the 400-page exhibition catalog all the way from Seoul to London knowing that it is a reference I want to keep on my book shelf. Perhaps this show is merely the beginning of a new chapter.
In November, Taipei Fine Arts Museum also opened a show focusing on female artists titled “Enclave: An Autobiography.” I sincerely hope that exhibitions showcasing and contextualizing works by women artists from Asia and their diaspora are not just fashion that comes and goes. The show “presents works that have attempted to encourage a reconfiguration of power through women’s language,” Bae noted. Indeed we need more shows and platforms to give Asian women artists their long overdue recognition and tell the stories they did not have the chance to tell.
“Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists” runs through March 3, 2025 at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea. More