CLEOPATRA

In this curation, I wanted the human form to become the quiet thread connecting three different expressions of modernity.

Gauguin’s Femme Tahitienne, created circa 1895–1903, has an almost sculptural stillness. Executed in watercolour, charcoal, pencil and ink, the figure seems to exist somewhere between portrait, memory and symbol.

Across the room, Moïse Kisling’s Didi of 1936 offers another vision of femininity. Her porcelain skin, red hair and vivid green ground belong unmistakably to the glamour of interwar Paris, yet the elongated line of her body looks back towards a much older tradition of portraiture.

Between them, the Maillol bust removes narrative almost entirely. The body becomes volume, weight and form.

I wanted these works to speak across time rather than simply coexist: Gauguin’s mystery, Kisling’s sensuality and Maillol’s monumentality, surrounded by objects chosen for the same qualities of line, material and presence.

The result is not a reconstruction of a period, but an imagined encounter — three artists, three bodies, three different ideas of beauty brought into one room.