Boudoir RF Alvarez, Bre Andy, Emiliana Henriquez, Oh de Laval, Yann Leto, Elena Redmond, Vanessa Santiago, Alexander Skats, Lauryn Welch. Installation view
Only in the gaze of the other do we begin to see ourselves.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Andrea Festa inaugurates its fall season with Boudoir, a group exhibition featuring works by RF Alvarez, Bre Andy, Emiliana Henriquez, Oh de Laval, Yann Leto, Elena Redmond, Vanessa Santiago, Alexander Skats, and Lauryn Welch. Curated by Domenico de Chirico, the exhibition offers a powerful and intimate reflection on self-discovery, sexuality, solitude, and identity.
Boudoir is not just an exhibition; it is a curated narrative about the intimate human experience—where identity, eroticism, vulnerability, and consciousness unfold within and between bodies. Through the works of nine international artists, the exhibition creates a space that is both personal and collective, delicate and radical. The show reflects on our perception of the self in relation to others, within a world of fleeting relationships, existential solitude, and ever-shifting emotional boundaries.
Historically, a boudoir was a private room for a woman—part retreat, part sanctuary, part site of seduction. In this exhibition, that private space becomes an expanded metaphor for psychological interiority and the politics of intimacy. It is a zone where the most private parts of the self—our desires, insecurities, memories, and transformations—can be examined without shame, and with radical freedom.
The artists in Boudoir engage with this intimate realm from diverse perspectives:
RF Alvarez conjures sensual mythologies with queer undertones and fluid bodies, exploring identity and cultural memory.
Bre Andy examines themes of softness, dislocation, and digital femininity with tactile vulnerability. Emiliana Henriquez explores the tension between physical form and internal pain, creating works that question how emotional experiences live within and distort the body. Oh de Laval brings erotic playfulness, power dynamics, and surreal humor into vividly chaotic scenes. Yann Leto constructs cinematic narratives and voyeuristic tableaus where figures are caught between knowing and being seen. Elena Redmond and Vanessa Santiago address personal mythology, identity fragmentation, and the subconscious self through symbolic figuration. Alexander Skats uses bold painterly forms to investigate themes of self-revelation and concealed desire. Lauryn (Red) Welch merges storytelling and color as tools for claiming emotional agency, gender multiplicity, and unapologetic self-definition.
Bre Andy examines themes of softness, dislocation, and digital femininity with tactile vulnerability. Emiliana Henriquez explores the tension between physical form and internal pain, creating works that question how emotional experiences live within and distort the body. Oh de Laval brings erotic playfulness, power dynamics, and surreal humor into vividly chaotic scenes. Yann Leto constructs cinematic narratives and voyeuristic tableaus where figures are caught between knowing and being seen. Elena Redmond and Vanessa Santiago address personal mythology, identity fragmentation, and the subconscious self through symbolic figuration. Alexander Skats uses bold painterly forms to investigate themes of self-revelation and concealed desire. Lauryn (Red) Welch merges storytelling and color as tools for claiming emotional agency, gender multiplicity, and unapologetic self-definition.
Curator Domenico de Chirico frames the exhibition through an existentialist and psychoanalytic lens, drawing from Heidegger’s concept of Dasein (being-there) and Sartre’s analysis of the self in relation to “the gaze of the other.” These philosophical notions are deeply woven into the works on view—each one a visual meditation on how we shape, perform, and hide ourselves within the context of desire, loneliness, and connection.
While the sexual dimension in many works may seem overt, it is treated not merely as eroticism but as a language—a method of inquiry into how power, freedom, shame, and pleasure operate within and between individuals. The body is rendered as both a vessel of history and a battleground of identity, a place where contradictions flourish: strength and fragility, submission and autonomy, pleasure and pain.
The exhibition also critiques social norms and institutions that repress instinctual expression. Inspired by the writings of the Marquis de Sade, who located philosophical liberation in sensual transgression, Boudoir challenges the boundaries between morality and liberation, tradition and fluidity, discipline and instinct.
In doing so, it opens a space that is genderless and borderless, a space where both feminine and masculine energies coexist, dissolve, and reassemble. The boudoir becomes not just a literal room, but a mental, emotional, and political space—a theater of becoming, of resistance, of vulnerability, and of healing.
Ultimately, Boudoir offers a mirror to the viewer—reflecting not just bodies and desires, but also the deep longing to be known, to see oneself, and to connect beyond the surface. In a world that often demands clarity and resolution, Boudoirrevels in ambiguity, embracing emotional complexity and celebrating the freedom that lies in truly seeing—and being seen.
