Artist Spotlight: Anne von Freyburg.
Anne von Freyburg, with ‘Something in the Air has Changed (After Fragonard, the Meeting)’ Massimiliano Emme @_massi_photo / PhotographerAnne von Freyburg is a London-based Dutch artist, whose practice spans textile installation, painting, sculpture and collage. Drawing on European art history, specifically the Dutch Golden Age still-life painting, she interrogates contemporary ideas of femininity, beauty, power, and consumption.
Her practice combines hand-painted textiles, embroidery, appliqué, upholstery fabrics, found materials and sculptural forms. She frequently enlarges details from historical paintings into sublime installations, transforming decorative floral arrangements into tactile environments. It’s a collapse of the borders between painting, craft and sculpture.
The conceptual crux of von Freyburg's work is on feminist re-readings of Western art history. Critiques of the historical objectification of women are embedded within each canonical painting, particularly through the conventions of the male gaze. Textiles become both medium and argument: materials traditionally dismissed as decorative or "craft" are contemporarily reframed as vehicles for critical discourse.
‘Something in the Air has Changed (After Fragonard, the Meeting)’Year: 2025Size: 350 x 250 cmtextile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry fabric, sequin fabrics, hand embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas.Pasquale Viglione @pasquale_viglione / PhotographerPrivate collection ItalyJoseph Agius: Your work reclaims visual signifiers like beauty, decoration and softness, that have been historically coded as feminine, therefore perceived as ornamental and less serious. Why do you think contemporary culture struggles to separate the feminine from the superficial?
Anne von Freyburg: Beauty and the feminine are societal constructs, ultimately designed to confine and disempower women. Femininity was introduced in the 19th-century Victorian era.
Rules of feminine behaviour were created to make men feel and look more masculine. Feminine women were seen as decorative and, because of their biology, associated with nature and thus primitive, secondary to men, who were associated with intellect and reason. Western society did, and still does, value reason over nature.
Those ideas and behaviours of the feminine cliché are, until this day, considered culturally feminine, still used to discriminate against women and beyond.
Spellbound (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: Love letters)Year: 2025Size: 285 x 150 cm114.17 x 70.87 inchtextile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry fabric, sequin fabrics, hand embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvasPasquale Viglione @pasquale_viglione / PhotographerYou seem less concerned with romance itself, and more so in the stories we've inherited about it. Is romance itself an outdated genre, or do we need better stories?
We need more inclusive and complex stories about romance, in my opinion. Luckily, independent films give us more options.
Your work reflects the Rococo movement, a period rich in depictions of wealth, pleasure, and romantic themes. What similarities do you see between aristocratic culture and today's image-driven consumer culture?
It definitely has similarities with the times we’re living in. The rich become richer, and the poor become poorer. In my view, nowadays, female identity is created through the female gaze.
In our modern world, we are overwhelmed by mass media, confronting us with ever-changing beauty standards. The objectification of ourselves has evolved; validation is often achieved through material means, such as fashion and plastic surgery. Now you can even alter your image with apps and deepfakes.
Soft Blush (After Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Reverie)Year: 2025Size: 220 x 200 cm86.60 x 78.75 inchTextile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry fabric, sequin fabrics, hand embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvasPasquale Viglione @pasquale_viglione / PhotographerYour works are seductively beautiful, before they reveal critique. Are you using beauty as a hook, encouraging audiences to participate in those systems you're questioning, or is that a cynical reading?
That is one way of reading the work. On the one hand, the work is indeed bedazzling with its seductive materials. But it’s also quite wobbly, quirky, imperfect and, at times, grotesque.
The topics I work through are quite complex. I use humour and beauty to work through feminist issues – disarming them and making them lighter. Like ‘In Flight Mode (After Fragonard, The Swing)’, there are small side jokes: the cartoon animals, Tom and Jerry, are having fun dancing and jumping on the woman’s dress and in the foliage.
In Flight Mode (After Fragonard, The Swing), 2026textile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry fabric, sequin fabrics, hand embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvas350 x 270 cm.Pasquale Viglione @pasquale_viglione / PhotographerThe decorative arts have arguably been excluded from the artistic compared to painting and sculpture. Does your textile practice feel like a challenge to those hierarchies?
I think I’m challenging a lot of hierarchies through my work: that is absolutely one of them. I do see that textile in contemporary art is making a comeback and booming right now. It’s gaining increasing recognition from museums, galleries, and art institutions.
The art world is becoming less Western-centric, seeing that other cultures aren’t so caught up in the ‘high’ and ‘low’ of art hierarchies. This is great progress; it shows that our culture is changing, which is really positive.
Electric Feel (After Fragonard, The Pursuit)Year: 2025Size: 350.52 x 269.24 cm138 x 106 inchtextile wall installation painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry fabric, sequin fabrics, hand embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvasPasquale Viglione @pasquale_viglione / PhotographerAcross works like Kabloom, Tuttifrutti and Amour Toujours, there is a saturation of excess and indulgence. What does excess expose about the way we consume beauty, romance and aspiration?
That’s a great question. Everything is being capitalised on nowadays, even romance – think about dating apps, and real-life dating shows. There could be the next best thing one scroll or click away. We’re being overloaded by information, and overly stimulated by it. There is just too much of everything, so it’s difficult to navigate through the noise.
Who are your key contemporary inspirations? Which artists have caught your eye this year?
As I’m working in my studio most of the time, I rarely see shows anymore, and I mostly see art online these days, but I really admire Joana Vasconcelos and Glenn Brown’s work.
Sunny Side Up (After Fragonard, The Lover Crowned)Year: 2025Size: 223.01 x 279.40 x 2.54 cm87.80 x 110 x 1 inchtextile painting: acrylic ink, synthetic fabrics, PVC fabric, tapestry fabric, sequin fabrics, hand embroidery, polyester wadding and hand-dyed tassel fringes on canvasPasquale Viglione @pasquale_viglione / Photographer