Exhibition
Paula Parole
A Promise Is A Spell
11 Feburary – 8 March 2026
Opening Preview: 11 February 2026, 6–8pm
In A Promise Is A Spell, Paula Parole reclaims the domestic space and transforms it into a childhood bedroom suspended between memory and awakening. What begins as the sweetness of childhood, when everything feels possible, slowly curdles into a more bitter longing, as the realities of adulthood surface and early promises are exposed as unmet or hollow. Parole invites viewers to return to the fictions that shaped us through childhood and to their gendered promises of safety, reward, love, and fulfillment that continue to linger in emotional afterlives. Parole approaches fairy tales as contested mythologies that script womanhood through ideals of beauty, obedience, and the fantasy of rescue while unsettling the cultural associations between domesticity and femininity. A dense, disorienting nostalgia fills the room, where the bedroom becomes a site for refuge and rehearsal, play and performance.
Be graceful. Be patient. Be passive. Be merciful. Throughout the exhibition, garments, guises, and learned scripts of womanhood slowly strip away, revealing the vulnerable figure of the inner child and the unresolved emotions she carries. Little girls appear in states of rage, anguish, and excess. Parole's inward-looking process extends toward a retrospective engagement with her own maternal instincts, where care is understood as a doubled condition: caring both to the child within herself and to the imagined or impending responsibility of nurturing another. Through these figures, Parole reveals the contradictions between patriarchal projections of womanhood and the expectations women place upon themselves, particularly around motherhood, care, and self-sacrifice.
Her intimates suspend a skeletal bone as a swing, hovering between desire and death. We All Die Alone fractures the innocence of play with an awareness of death as an antidote of 'Happily Ever After' endings coded in fairy tales. Like the pendular motion of a swing, the domestic interior is held in continuous oscillation between fantasy and reality, care and control, intimacy and dissolution.
How To Sit Straight, a grand horse sculpture reworks the fairy-tale symbol of a saviour prince charming into a dysfunctional, immobile form. Adorned with needles and thorns, it even becomes harmful, transforming it into a soft weapon through which the artist's adult self claims protection and autonomy. In this guarded space, safety no longer depends on fantasies of rescue or the authority of patriarchal desire. Its wonky paper mâché body recalls the DIY gestures of childhood craft as a critique of the inherent association between childhood craft and feminine craft that is founded upon a patriarchal division of labour. Fantasy is pierced by lived reality by her grandmother's favourite horse's hair and by newspaper fragments that express misogynistic language from the present.
As you walk through A Promise Is A Spell, the symbolism grows increasingly persuasive, unfolding quietly in every corner. Elsewhere, a series of wing paintings and an emptied cage, Fear Not, symbolise a conflicted relationship with freedom. Together they reflect the experience of growing within systems that measure worth through achievement, rather than experience, and promise liberation while quietly constraining it. Parole suggests that leaving the 'golden' cage and entering the 'real world' is a situation that may appear luxurious or comfortable on the surface, yet is deeply restrictive and challenging. Parole questions to what extent women can free their bodies and subconsciousness from the disciplines of society. Inscribed with the words I Flew Towards You Until I Hit a Window Again, the paintings trace the persistence of hope in relationships that are continually sought yet quietly obstructed. Now in her thirties, Parole embraces the exhibition as an act of liberation from those false promises once made.
A Promise Is A Spell is born out of the collaboration between Display Fever and Fanshaw Projects, reflecting a shared approach to storytelling as a live curatorial practice. Together, they create an environment that blurs the boundaries between memory, myth, and the present moment.
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: 11 February 2026, 6–8pm
In A Promise Is A Spell, Paula Parole reclaims the domestic space and transforms it into a childhood bedroom suspended between memory and awakening. What begins as the sweetness of childhood, when everything feels possible, slowly curdles into a more bitter longing, as the realities of adulthood surface and early promises are exposed as unmet or hollow. Parole invites viewers to return to the fictions that shaped us through childhood and to their gendered promises of safety, reward, love, and fulfillment that continue to linger in emotional afterlives. Parole approaches fairy tales as contested mythologies that script womanhood through ideals of beauty, obedience, and the fantasy of rescue while unsettling the cultural associations between domesticity and femininity. A dense, disorienting nostalgia fills the room, where the bedroom becomes a site for refuge and rehearsal, play and performance.
Be graceful. Be patient. Be passive. Be merciful. Throughout the exhibition, garments, guises, and learned scripts of womanhood slowly strip away, revealing the vulnerable figure of the inner child and the unresolved emotions she carries. Little girls appear in states of rage, anguish, and excess. Parole's inward-looking process extends toward a retrospective engagement with her own maternal instincts, where care is understood as a doubled condition: caring both to the child within herself and to the imagined or impending responsibility of nurturing another. Through these figures, Parole reveals the contradictions between patriarchal projections of womanhood and the expectations women place upon themselves, particularly around motherhood, care, and self-sacrifice.
Her intimates suspend a skeletal bone as a swing, hovering between desire and death. We All Die Alone fractures the innocence of play with an awareness of death as an antidote of 'Happily Ever After' endings coded in fairy tales. Like the pendular motion of a swing, the domestic interior is held in continuous oscillation between fantasy and reality, care and control, intimacy and dissolution.
How To Sit Straight, a grand horse sculpture reworks the fairy-tale symbol of a saviour prince charming into a dysfunctional, immobile form. Adorned with needles and thorns, it even becomes harmful, transforming it into a soft weapon through which the artist's adult self claims protection and autonomy. In this guarded space, safety no longer depends on fantasies of rescue or the authority of patriarchal desire. Its wonky paper mâché body recalls the DIY gestures of childhood craft as a critique of the inherent association between childhood craft and feminine craft that is founded upon a patriarchal division of labour. Fantasy is pierced by lived reality by her grandmother's favourite horse's hair and by newspaper fragments that express misogynistic language from the present.
As you walk through A Promise Is A Spell, the symbolism grows increasingly persuasive, unfolding quietly in every corner. Elsewhere, a series of wing paintings and an emptied cage, Fear Not, symbolise a conflicted relationship with freedom. Together they reflect the experience of growing within systems that measure worth through achievement, rather than experience, and promise liberation while quietly constraining it. Parole suggests that leaving the 'golden' cage and entering the 'real world' is a situation that may appear luxurious or comfortable on the surface, yet is deeply restrictive and challenging. Parole questions to what extent women can free their bodies and subconsciousness from the disciplines of society. Inscribed with the words I Flew Towards You Until I Hit a Window Again, the paintings trace the persistence of hope in relationships that are continually sought yet quietly obstructed. Now in her thirties, Parole embraces the exhibition as an act of liberation from those false promises once made.
A Promise Is A Spell is born out of the collaboration between Display Fever and Fanshaw Projects, reflecting a shared approach to storytelling as a live curatorial practice. Together, they create an environment that blurs the boundaries between memory, myth, and the present moment.
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.