RE:VISION, 16th East Wing Biennial
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK, 2025
Men in Suits is a performative installation that re-acts and re-invents the legacy of patriarchal power through symbolic materials and embodied gesture. Drawing on Yves Klein’s Anthropometries, this work disrupts the historical canon by replacing the absent male artist with a present female body. The artist becomes both observer and agent, reclaiming autonomy through action.
In this ritual-like performance, Gvardeitseva soaks men’s suits in a vivid blue she names International Misogynistic Blue. Once symbols of authority, the suits are stripped of their wearers, dropped, stepped on, and imprinted onto paper, leaving behind fragile traces of a rigid, fading system. These marks are not just stains; they are memory-prints — a visual archive of collapse and transition.
Men in Suits reconstructs the visual language of power, inviting us to re-vision what is preserved and what is allowed to expire. It questions who writes history and insists on the right to revise it. In the liminal space of the “blue hour,” where one cycle ends and another begins, Gvardeitseva imagines new structures — flexible, inclusive, and alive with potential.
About the Biennial:
Through a wide-ranging selection of contemporary artwork and an exciting slate of events throughout 2025–2027, Re:Vision urges audiences to question: Who writes history? Who has the right to revise it? and How can art destabilise these narratives?
Founded in 1991 in the East Wing of Somerset House by Joshua Compston, the East Wing Biennial is a student-led exhibition dedicated to contemporary art and cultural dialogue. Revived in 2023 at Vernon Square, it continues to provide a vital platform for emerging artists and curators.
