Exploring divine feminine power in 'La Mariposa (Butterfly Woman)'

Soho Revue

12 February - 15 March 2025

Omnia mutantur, Nihil interit. The title of one of Qian Qian’s two paintings in the exhibition La Mariposa (Butterfly Woman) at Soho Revue, translates as “everything changes, nothing dies”. It is a quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which succinctly captures the themes of transformation and universal interconnectedness that unite the works in this group show curated by Becca Pelly-Fry.

The exhibition’s title is inspired by a chapter in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ 2008 book Women Who Run with the Wolves. The author describes the ritual dance performed by a Native American woman in New Mexico, known as the ‘Butterfly Dancer’. Defying expectations that a butterfly woman might be fragile and ethereal, in reality the dancer is corpulent, her body contains worlds. Centring her curatorial theme on this elemental performance, Pelly-Fry calls for a ‘reclamation of the divine feminine’; she invokes the power of a wild feminine spirit that connects with Mother Earth and its physical embodiment in our everyday lives.

On the ground floor of the gallery, Claire Morgan’s huge painting Show of Strength, 2023 depicts an athletic naked woman clutching the limp corpse of a fox to her torso. The foxes head lolls at an unnatural, broken neck angle, its muzzle gaping open in a ferocious display of sharp teeth. The woman’s head is angled back into shadow, her expression disdainful as she grips the tail of the fox, dripping onto the floor. The set up has some of the theatricality and symbolism of the late Paula Rego. The shadow cast by light from the right melds the human with the animal with uncanny effect. Morgan has often used the fox in her work – figuring the persistence of the wild within the urban landscape, the abjection of nature in the face of human degradation of the environment.

Serena Korda’s Witch Hat 1 and 2, both 2019, are aquamarine evocations of the sea floor: crusted with urchins and necklaced with cotton ropes that could be seaweeds or the detritus from fishing vessels. The pointed, witches hat form of these pieces puts one in mind of volcanic vents, and from there, the sense of the earth as a living, breathing entity. One longs to run a hand over the seductive textures and glazes.

On the first floor of the gallery, Ukrainian artist Anna Perach has installed a spectacular chandelier-like sculpture, Extraction (Holes) 2024. First seen a year ago in her solo exhibition at Gasworks, London, its structure is made up of welded steel chain, each ‘arm’ of which terminates in a colourful, tufted form from which emerges a curlicue of glass. It is wondrously playful with a compelling tactility through the use of such contrasting materials: the tough chains giving way to the softness of the wool tufting, paired with the brittle fragility of the blown glass. A perfunctory, bare lightbulb hangs at the centre of the structure, like a throw-away punchline. The artist’s large works on paper Possession II and III, feature contorted female bodies, apparently in the throes of an ecstatic experience. Possession II in particular recalls Louise Bourgeois’ various treatments of the Arch of Hysteria, that reference the late 19th-century notion of women as intellectually inferior beings, driven only by their biology.

The second of Qian Qian’s paintings featured in the exhibition is titled Chiliocosm (I had to look the term up). It is a concept associated with Buddhism, meaning the simultaneous existence of many thousands of different worlds and beings. Winner of the Mother Art Prize in 2022, Qian Qian had a solo show associated with the prize at Richard Saltoun gallery in 2023, and a solo show with Lychee One in 2024. Her paintings in Mariposa are the most accomplished yet. The artist has worked in watercolour and oil, but these new paintings are acrylic or acrylic with watercolour. It is hard to avoid reference to Surrealism since the spectral figures in both paintings recall the work of recently re-appraised artists such as Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington. There are also passages of what looks like the decalcomania technique characteristic of Max Ernst.

Qian Qian’s cosmic consciousness is all her own, however. In Omnia mutantur, Nihil interit two figures wreathed in light appear to dance towards each other. The figure to the left is transparent so that their fantastical skeleton is revealed, chained at the neck. The figure holds out a ring to the figure on the right that consists of nothing but their circulatory system, coloured red and blue like an anatomical diagram. Around the figures, fields of energy appear to flow and pulsate, as if they were dancing in a nebula as pictured by the Hubble telescope.

These are just some highlights of a twelve-person show that addresses themes that are increasingly prevalent at the moment. Soho Revue is another dynamic new gallery in London, open in its current location only since 2022. When not working with guest curators, the gallery focuses primarily on the work of younger women artists and recent graduates. Make sure it’s on your map from now on.

Caroline Douglas, Director

La Mariposa (Butterfly Woman) curated by Becca Pelly-Fry at Soho Revue

Soho Revue, 14 Greek St, Soho, W1D 4DP