Timothy Taylor presents Dreaming of Eden, a group show highlighting provocative works by female artists at the gallery’s New York space in Tribeca. The exhibition includes works by Alicia Adamerovich, Louise Bourgeois, Francesca DiMattio, Tracey Emin, Emma Fineman, Natalia González Martín, Jenna Gribbon, Karyn Lyons, Malù dalla Piccola, Hayal Pozanti, Antonia Showering, Penny Slinger, Kiki Smith, and Katy Stubbs.

Curated around themes of transgression and escape, the exhibition’s wide range of imagery explores sexuality, violence, anarchy, and solitude. Many of these artists draw on botanical landscapes and mythological female characters to imagine a world of primal fears and longed-for freedoms, across media including painting, sculpture, collage, and works on paper. The works in Dreaming of Eden recast female desire as an object of power: a dreamlike wilderness in which women are free to explore and embody their fears and wishes without restraint.

Louise Bourgeois was among the first contemporary artists to study the female body as a site of transformation and violence. Her work on paper Geometry of Pleasure 3 (2009) depicts abstract forms alluding to Victorian botanical drawings, while suggesting darker associations to the female genitalia: a Venus fly trap with a predatory edge. Kiki Smith’s tapestry Earth (2012) reconsiders the story of Eve’s seduction and corruption of the Garden of Eden, as a nude woman who confronts the viewer with one hand resting confidently on a snake.

While some artists explore such organic and natural forms, others exult in the ugliness or violence of fantasy realms. The sprawled nude figure of Tracey Emin’s Tight (2012) evokes a body that hurts and bleeds, but also seeks out its own sexual pleasure. Katy Stubb’s ceramic pot Bacchants (2023) is based on the Maenads of Greek mythology who, possessed by Dionysus, tore apart the unlucky men who spied on their worship.

These artworks make an escape from the rational, framed in perspectives ranging from the joyful to the unsettling. Together, vivid abstractions and outcast figures imply a desire for freedom and self-expression.