In the world of art, dialogue across time is inevitable; sometimes whispered, sometimes defiantly spoken. In this exhibition, Anastasia Tyan’s Letters of Love series stands in quiet, radical conversation with three works by Picasso: The Embrace (1905); Femme (Dora Maar) qui pleure devant un mur (1937); and Portrait de Françoise en costume tailleur (1946). These pieces, now part of our shared collection, form the historical echo chamber against which her voice rises; a voice that turns the gaze inward, not to objectify, but to reclaim, to heal, and to educate. In her work, the vulva becomes what it always should have been; not an object of spectacle, but a symbol of beauty, liberty, and human wholeness.
Her art is rooted in empathy and confrontation alike; an effort to normalize the body, to make it once again a site of truth and learning rather than shame. The Letters of Love collection, intimate imprints of her body on fabric marked with lipstick, eyeliner, and tenderness, challenges the centuries of mediation between male artist and female subject. Her own words accompany the works as both invitation and boundary: “We use lipstick not to hide bruises, but to be seen with love and manners.” Each imprint becomes an act of reclamation; a redefinition of eroticism through autonomy, a plea for a world where sexual education replaces stigma and love replaces silence. As she writes, “Art is one of the most important sources in education.” Here, the body itself becomes pedagogy; a teacher of empathy, self-awareness, and consent.
In this exhibition, the contrast between Picasso’s women is profound; Dora Maar’s weeping face, pressed against a wall, is the image of fragmentation and emotional violence, whereas Françoise Gilot emerges serene, clear-lined, and whole. Between them lies a transformation, the passage from despair to composure, from confinement to independence. Both Françoise and Anastasia, like flowers, bear the long neck of poise and endurance, and like the vulva, they bloom as symbols of life and resilience. Françoise Gilot was the only woman to leave Picasso, and she did so with the same strength and clarity that Anastasia brings to her art today. Yet where Picasso’s portraits were filtered through the lens of possession or admiration, Anastasia’s work reclaims the body as its own author; it neither pleads nor poses, it speaks.
The three Picassos form a chronology of love and power; The Embrace as the tender ideal of connection, Dora Maar as the collapse under its weight, and Françoise as the emergence of strength. Anastasia’s art completes that evolution. It is not a rejection but a resolution; where Picasso’s women were seen, hers see back. The vulva, in its infinite variations, is no longer a metaphor imposed by another hand but a living emblem of autonomy. It is the flower reborn; not to be admired, but to be understood.