“She Was Never Just Pretty”

Ceramic, with electricity and guilt. 1950–2025
Recontextualized by Annelies Nuy

Exhibition Statement

At first glance, she appears to be a charming, decorative figurine from a bygone era. A tropical girl, slightly sensual, slightly kitschy. But behind her closed eyes lies a history of projection, fantasy, and silent appropriation.

This ceramic figure — once intended as a lamp, an atmosphere piece, a bit of living room exotica — reveals, upon closer inspection, a complex web of colonial imagination, gender roles, and aesthetic shame. She is not only an object of desire, but of forgetting, suppression, and passive entertainment.

Why this work now?

In a time when discomfort around representation, shame, and cultural appropriation is rising again, this figurine serves as a rare and tangible object of conversation. Her very existence asks:
Who used to look at me — and how do you look at me now?

Thematic layers:

• Sexualization and stereotyping
  The woman as tropical fantasy object — an abstracted dream of the “other.”

• Function and decoration
  Her body is literally embedded in utility — art as device, woman as accessory.

• Kitsch as mirror
  It’s the flawed edge, the exaggeration and naivety, that reveal deeper cultural patterns.

• Postcolonial and feminist context
  This is not a portrait, but a projection. An icon of how the West amused itself with the illusion of the “exotic.”

Curatorial Reframe:

“She was never truly seen. She was there to be looked at.
Now she stands on a pedestal. And looks back — with her eyes closed.”

This presentation is part of Annelies Nuy’s broader investigation into the origins of shame, fascination, and unspoken power structures within aesthetics. By isolating, relocating and renaming the figurine, the discomfort becomes part of the experience. Not resolved — but revealed.

“She Was Never Just Pretty”
Keramiek, met elektriciteit en schuldgevoel. 1950–2025
Gehercontextualiseerd door Annelies Nuy

Provenance

On an early morning, June 1st, in the heart of Piemonte, Italy.
The sun slanted across a cluttered table of forgotten objects — porcelain, tin boxes, timeworn glassware. And there she sat, amidst the nostalgia and the noise. Slightly tilted, eyes closed, her hand resting on a mysterious black object with a cord.

The market vendor looked up, assured. “It’s antique,” he said. And though his stall overflowed with the ephemeral, he knew what he held: an object that lingers. Not because of its beauty, but because of its strangeness. Its silence. Its charge.

And so her second life began. No longer as decoration — but as a question.
As a mirror. As a statement.