Marlborough is delighted to present The Laughing Torso, a presentation curated by art historian and curator Anke Kempkes at Frieze Masters. Borrowing its title from the eponymous memoir of British artist Nina Hamnett, the project celebrates the work of women artists who – rather than accepting the traditional role of model/muse, a mere ‘torso’ waiting to be painted by men – embarked on individual journeys of self-expression and artistic vanguardism. The presentation showcases works by artists who chose to change their female birth names in favour of male or gender-ambiguous titles. Be it for reasons relating to gender identity, discrimination or political persecution, this radical self-fashioning enabled them to transcend the narrow parameters imposed on women in the 20th century and create newly conceptualised, ultra-modern identities. Works on show will include paintings, sculpture, photography, and archival material.

Artists: Valentine Hugo, Gluck, Marlow Moss, Paule Vézelay, Nicolaas Warb, Michael West, Dadamaino, Axell

Anke Kempkes is an international Curator, Art Historian and Critic specialised on Female Avant-Garde and Feminist Art History, 20th-century movements of Abstraction, Surrealism and Queer Modernism. She was Chief Curator at Kunsthalle Basel and Muzeum Susch, Switzerland. She is a Lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Image: Axell, La Polonaise, 1969 © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2023