Off to Exmouth Market over in Clarkenwell, where Mexico City’s rather compelling (for she is rather compelling) Pia Camil has a solo show called Bestia opening tonight at a rather busy Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery. Art is mostly a walking sport we’re on our way from Cork Street and heading for a solo exhibition of new works by Pia Camil if you want to come along;
“The show marks both the artist’s debut solo exhibition in London and her first presentation with the gallery. Drawing from personal experience, the exhibition explores the unstable boundaries between looking and being looked at. Continuing Camil’s long-standing interest in dismantling fixed narratives and hierarchies, the exhibition invites viewers to connect with their own desire as a place for resistance. Throughout Bestia, Camil rejects binary ways of thinking that seek to separate instinct from intellect and the public from the private. Instead, the exhibition embraces complexity, emphasising the coexistence of multiple truths regarding the female experience. By unsettling fixed notions of womanhood and inherited structures, Camil argues for a nuanced understanding of identity and subjectivity, based on the collective experience” which is all a rather interesting way of introducing us to us a collection of paintings featuring various images of, well there’s a rather deliciously striking oil painting that dates from 2026 called Domme…
There’s a number of paintings that come in door-fronted frames that allow them to be closed and hidden when we don’t want to look at them or be seen looking at them, or maybe when we don’t want them looking at you? And in the middle of the room, an elephant no one seems to be looking at as the politely chat in little groups, well no, not an elephant, a giant inflatable naked woman on all fours or is she a giant rocking horse? And the audience at this opening is rather interesting one as well, a rather different collection of people who have come along. And the looks on faces both in the paintings and on those viewing them.
Unsettling? Demanding? Certainly powerful, powerful as both paintings and statements or at least the artist’s thoughts (or maybe ours?). Does Bestia contradict a lot of Pia Camil’s previous work? Well no, this is a new body of work, it clearly relates though, on going themes, repeated questions. This time these paintings feel like a set of invites, challenges, the subjects in the pieces looking at is and questioning those understandings of wildness and desire we may have, the right and wrong of it all? It does feel like it all needs to be seen as one body, that you need to see all these pieces together, that there are conversations between the paintings that are almost daring you to join in. I want to say I really like them, dare I? It isn’t anything that uncomfortable surely? It could be disruptive and that bit about “drawing from personal experience”. It is work that wants to set about dismantling and maybe on more than one level, it is a case of standing there allowing yourself to be questioned. I want to say I like standing here quietly looking at these paintings, like isn’t quite the right word though and besides the conversations the paintings are having (as we walk around that giant inflatable woman yet again), I rather like the (instinctive?) conversations being struck up between us, us the viewers I mean, people who apparently don’t know each other until the paintings introduced us – “you never know what each of us is thinking” offers the woman standing next to me as a parting show before she turns on her (high) heel and heads for more wine. Oh the counterpoints, yes, this is a challenging exhibition, challenging is good, this doesn’t disappoint, it so easily could have. This going to be a bust couple of (Frieze) weeks, don’t let Pia Camil and her challenges pass you by in the noise of it all… (sw)
Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Exmouth Market is found at 20-22 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QE. The space is open Wednesday through to Sunday, Midday until 6pm. Bestia runs from 9th October until 22nd November 2026. Do explore piacamil.me as well, this show is only one of many sides that all make a whole…
Previously
As always do click on an image to enlarge it or to run the slide show…
