Viewing room

"The Sphinx is the guardian of the threshold. She represents the marriage of the cerebral and the instinctive, the human and the animal. She is the 'in-between' state where all transformations are possible."

Fini, Leonor. Le Livre de Leonor Fini: Peintures, dessins, écrits. Lausanne: Edita S.A., 1975

This exhibition situates thirty graphic works by Leonor Fini within a trans-temporal dialogue with Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and African ritual objects, foregrounding a shared language of metamorphosis and spiritual agency. Fini’s world of sphinxes, feline priestesses, and androgynous seers intersects with African masks, reliquaries, and ancient Mediterranean effigies inviting a reading of the body not as portrait but as conduit - an instrument of transformation between visible and invisible realms.

Myth & Metamorphosis

Hybrid and transformed bodies occupy a central place within the visual and literary traditions of the ancient Mediterranean. Human-animal hybrids were central to the visual expression and cosmological conception of Ancient Egyptian religion. Additionally, figures such as sphinxes, sirens, and griffins appear in Greek material culture from the Archaic period onwards, while literary sources, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, preserve a parallel interest in altered and composite forms well into the Roman Imperial Period. These types remained stable across centuries, forming a recognisable repertoire through which difference from the human was articulated.

Staging the Body

Organising the body through controlled forms of appearance has a long history in both theatrical and ritual contexts. In European performance traditions, gesture, costume and staging operate within codified systems that determine how figures are presented and interpreted. Comparable principles in Africa structure ritual dances where the body undergoes prescribed sequences of action and display. Across these contexts, the body is not approached as a neutral or given form, but as something constituted through regulated procedures of visibility.

The Ma(s)king of the Self

Masks have functioned historically within defined systems of use where identity is mediated through external form. Their operation depends on conventions governing appearance and context, which authorise and effect presence. Within Fini’s practice, the face is treated as a surface open to alteration, repetition and substitution. Identity emerges as contingent upon the forms through which it is presented.