Can we use the talking cure to solve society's 'problem' with women?

The Interior invites audiences into an exaggerated consultation room, playfully furnished for psychoanalysis. Natalya Hughes's immersive installation—combining sculptural seating, richly patterned soft furnishings, and uncanny objets d'art, nestled around a hand-painted mural—generates a stimulating space to unpack our collective and unconscious biases.

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

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 offers a space where women can be reimagined on different terms in a post-# MeToo world.

The Interior is a travelling exhibition organised by the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) and 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. 

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

Exhibition partners

Natalya Hughes Fabric design (detail) from The Interior 2022. Courtesy the artist.