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Penelope was a visionary weaver who turned the only form of expression allowed to women into an act of resistance. Far from passively awaiting her husband, she used her loom to subvert the established order, asserting control over her own time and destiny.
This exhibition, Penelope. Her Journeys, reclaims her story by placing the female voice at its centre.
For artists Gayle Chong Kwan, Stephanie Blake and Kimiko Yoshida, Penelope is not a symbol of obedience, but a woman in search of freedom, creative space, and identity; an artist who transforms life into language.
Their interpretations reveal a multifaceted figure whose struggle mirrors that of many women and artists today. In this narrative, the walls of Palazzo Bonvicini become not a domestic constraint but a site of creative power. Penelope no longer weaves in silence; she speaks, acts, and shapes her own myth; a new mythology that resonates with the voices of all women.
GAYLE CHONG KWAN
THE LOTUS EATERS
Penelope embodies the role of the mistress of the house where hospitality is inverted and forced upon her, a situation in which the domestic role and site are placed under constant siege.
The constant pressure under which she lives has the effect of turning her into a woman who hangs grimly to the past and finds solace and comfort only in the world of sleep and dreams, though even those can be painful for her.[1]
Chong Kwan takes the classic and traditional ideas of domesticity and the domestic space and transforms them under the guise of a dream-like world into defence, cunning, tactics, and battle. The work blends escape, memory, and resilience in material, virtual, and performative approaches.
The Lotus Eaters is an installation that moves between sculpture, fabric, processions, and a moving-image VR landscape. Hanging fabric doubles as wearable cloaks and poles bearing kitchen utensils and fabric forms are also used in performances of ritual processions. Chong Kwan’s work reflects the home as both a battleground and a source of strength. It reinterprets the theme of xenia (sacred hospitality) through Penelope’s perspective, her maids, and her encounters with the 108 suitors, through surreal versions of domestic, kitchen, and household objects and images.
[1] Jones, Peter, Introduction to Homer’s The Odyssey, p. xxiii, Penguin Classics.
STEPHANIE BLAKE
PENELOPE, THE STORYTELLER
The installation signed by illustrator, artist and author Stephanie Blake is primarily defined by a single desk, a sculpture on a stool, and a typewriter; an austere setting that foregrounds the act of writing. Seated at the desk, a bronze (self-?)portrait of Penelope becomes Homer through the act of narration. In Blake’s interpretation, this identification extends further: the artist herself coincides with Penelope, collapsing the distance between author, narrator, and protagonist. The act of writing thus becomes both performative and autobiographical, situating the artwork within the very gesture it stages.
What was once an oral epic is here transformed into a written text, shifting the origin of The Odyssey from collective voice to intimate authorship. For Blake, the uncertainty surrounding Homer’s identity opens a speculative space: Homer is imagined as Penelope herself, reclaiming the narrative by writing it from within. Authorship thus becomes an act of resistance, a quiet yet radical assertion of agency enacted in domestic stillness.
From the clatter of the typewriter emerges a continuous stream of blue waves that spill into the room. Onto this fluid surface, visions unfold: turbulent seas, gusting winds, and rolling thunder. Waves, like words, propagate outward, filling the space and dissolving the boundary between language and landscape, interior and exterior.
Despite its apparent motion, the installation evokes a profound sense of suspension. The endless flow recalls Penelope’s perpetual weaving and unweaving, as well as Ithaca’s fate held in abeyance. The rhythmic back-and-forth of the loom finds its echo in the narrative structure of The Odyssey itself: a story defined not by linear progression but by cyclical return, delay, and repetition, where Ulysses advances only by continually moving back and forth.
KIMIKO YOSHIDA
APRÈS LE MASSACRE, LA RÉCONCILIATION
In Après le Massacre, la Réconciliation, Kimiko Yoshida transforms the legendary expectation of Penelope into a poetic virtuality where myth, violence, and reconciliation converge. Penelope is envisioned as the ultimate reconciler, guiding the return of the absent hero and the reweaving of bonds suspended across time.
The installation combines visual, spatial, and performative elements to evoke the rhythms of waiting, return, and reunion. A pink Murano glass chandelier, Colpo di Vento. Le retour d’Ulysse, hangs above the dining table, its delicate colour echoing both the musk-scented hybrid rose Penelope, cultivated by Reverend Joseph Pemberton in 1924, and the ephemeral beauty of sakura[1].
In the performative dimension, the artist will stage along 2026 Le Dîner de Réconciliation, inviting a select number of guests to partake in the Menu of Reunion. Here, the culinary experience of Yoshida becomes a form of art: the table transforms into a stage, the shared meal an intimate act of reconciliation. In this ritual, the artist herself coincides with Penelope, collapsing the boundaries between protagonist, host, and author, and situating the artwork in the gesture it enacts. Through this interplay of space, ritual, and narrative, Après le Massacre, la Réconciliation meditates on the delicate choreography of hospitality, waiting, and the return of what was long awaited, an absence made present through performative and sensory experience.
[1] cherry blossoms
GAYLE CHONG KWAN – KIMIKO YOSHIDA – STEPHANIE BLAKE