Exhibition
Paula Parole
A Promise Is A Spell
13 Feburary – 8 March 2026
Opening Preview: 13 February 2026, 6–8pm
A Promise is a Spell marks Paula Parole’s debut solo exhibition, approaching fairy tales as contested mythologies and stories that have long scripted girlhood through beauty, obedience, and the fantasy of rescue. What begins as the sweetness of childhood memories, when everything feels possible, unfolds into the realities of adulthood, where many of those promises remain unmet and hollow.
The exhibition interrogates the gendered promises of safety, love, and fulfillment embedded in fairy tales, exposing how these stories discipline women’s bodies, desires, and sense of worth. Parole confronts the disguise of gendered bias under fantastical narratives that are dressed under archetypical story-telling structures which phonetically sound familiar. These mythologies are shown to persist not only culturally but somatically, shaping habits, language, and self-perception, even within contemporary narratives of empowerment that continue to reward conformity.
The exhibition unfolds within a domestic, childlike interior that oscillates between care and control. At its centre stands an adult-sized, immobilised rocking horse: a relic of promised freedom rendered unusable by scale and expectation. Through painting, sculpture, and found materials, Parole works intuitively, embracing ambiguity, contradiction, and playfulness as strategies to unsettle inherited value systems. Curated collaboratively by Display Fever and Fanshaw Projects, A Promise is a Spell creates an intimate space where memory, myth, and the present moment blur, inviting viewers to reconsider the stories that shaped them and their lingering emotional residue.ation that resists singular definition.
Paula Parole (1992) holds a BA from the Academy of Fine Art Maastricht, where she specialised in film and graduated with distinction in 2016. After releasing two award-winning short films, she shifted her focus to fine art, while working as an art mediator for the Boros Collection Berlin.
Since 2020, Paula has been based in London. She earned a Graduate Diploma and a Master of Fine Art, both with distinction, from Chelsea College of Art and Central Saint Martins, UAL, for which she was awarded the Mona Hatoum Foundation Scholarship.
Her work has been exhibited across the UK, Netherlands, Germany, and China, including institutions like TATE Collective, Guts Gallery, Liliya Art Gallery, Bonian Space, Filet and Bombfactory Art Foundation. She has been a finalist for the Prisma Art Prize, shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2024, and featured in Muse Magazine, ArtUltra, ArtPlugged, FAD Magazine and the Financial Times.
She also co-founded the Filthy Fox Auction Club, which introduces a selection of art graduates each year through auction to support early careers. Its first event, held in East London in 2022, challenged traditional sales and has supported over 40 emerging artists so far.
A Promise Is A Spell
Opening Preview: 13 February 2026, 6–8pm
A Promise is a Spell marks Paula Parole’s debut solo exhibition, approaching fairy tales as contested mythologies and stories that have long scripted girlhood through beauty, obedience, and the fantasy of rescue. What begins as the sweetness of childhood memories, when everything feels possible, unfolds into the realities of adulthood, where many of those promises remain unmet and hollow.
The exhibition interrogates the gendered promises of safety, love, and fulfillment embedded in fairy tales, exposing how these stories discipline women’s bodies, desires, and sense of worth. Parole confronts the disguise of gendered bias under fantastical narratives that are dressed under archetypical story-telling structures which phonetically sound familiar. These mythologies are shown to persist not only culturally but somatically, shaping habits, language, and self-perception, even within contemporary narratives of empowerment that continue to reward conformity.
The exhibition unfolds within a domestic, childlike interior that oscillates between care and control. At its centre stands an adult-sized, immobilised rocking horse: a relic of promised freedom rendered unusable by scale and expectation. Through painting, sculpture, and found materials, Parole works intuitively, embracing ambiguity, contradiction, and playfulness as strategies to unsettle inherited value systems. Curated collaboratively by Display Fever and Fanshaw Projects, A Promise is a Spell creates an intimate space where memory, myth, and the present moment blur, inviting viewers to reconsider the stories that shaped them and their lingering emotional residue.ation that resists singular definition.
Paula Parole (1992) holds a BA from the Academy of Fine Art Maastricht, where she specialised in film and graduated with distinction in 2016. After releasing two award-winning short films, she shifted her focus to fine art, while working as an art mediator for the Boros Collection Berlin.
Since 2020, Paula has been based in London. She earned a Graduate Diploma and a Master of Fine Art, both with distinction, from Chelsea College of Art and Central Saint Martins, UAL, for which she was awarded the Mona Hatoum Foundation Scholarship.
Her work has been exhibited across the UK, Netherlands, Germany, and China, including institutions like TATE Collective, Guts Gallery, Liliya Art Gallery, Bonian Space, Filet and Bombfactory Art Foundation. She has been a finalist for the Prisma Art Prize, shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2024, and featured in Muse Magazine, ArtUltra, ArtPlugged, FAD Magazine and the Financial Times.
She also co-founded the Filthy Fox Auction Club, which introduces a selection of art graduates each year through auction to support early careers. Its first event, held in East London in 2022, challenged traditional sales and has supported over 40 emerging artists so far.