The Interior

The Interior

Natalya Hughes

Can we use the talking cure to solve society’s ‘problem’ with women? Natalya Hughes’s The Interior invites audiences into an exaggerated consultation room playfully furnished for psychoanalysis.

Interested in the role of women and their historical absence from positions of power, the part-professional, part-domestic setting conjured by The Interior plays with gendered power dynamics between public and private space. The couches that dot the gallery take their lush contours from the shapes of the female body, and their detailed upholstery sees motifs of eyes, rats, and snakes from Freud’s patient case studies ripple over the space in fleshy tones.

The decorative elements play an important role in signifying knowledge and professionalism, while also embracing a domesticity to encourage trust from the patient to explore their unconscious desires and impulses.

Audiences are invited to recline and be enveloped, soothed, and held by the furniture’s womanly forms while taking turns playing analyst and patient. Throughout this bodily encounter, The Interior hopes to create a space where the existence of women can be reimagined on different terms in the post-‘Me Too’ world.

The Interior is a travelling exhibition organised by Institute of Modern Art (IMA), toured by Museums & Galleries Queensland.

The Interior has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body; the Australia Council’s Contemporary Touring Initiative; The Queensland Government through Arts Queensland; the Fini Artist Fellowship through the Sheila Foundation; Queensland College of Art, Griffith University; Creative Art Research Institute, Griffith University; and Porter’s
Paints, New Farm.

Museums & Galleries Queensland is supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation and receives funds from Creative Partnerships Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.

Natalya Hughes is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane, and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.