Beneath Patty Carroll's saturated colours and impeccable sets lies a more troubling reality.
At Gallery XII, the series Anonymous Women ("Anonymous Women") stages the absurd and poetic disappearance of the housewife, transforming the domestic space into a fascinating theatre of illusions.
It takes a moment to grasp what is unsettling about these compositions. A pink bedroom that is too perfect, a living room overflowing with objects, a barely visible silhouette—sometimes reduced to a pair of legs, an arm, an indistinct mass of fabric. In Patty Carroll's work, the female figure is never quite present. She dissolves into the patterns, is swallowed up by the furniture, blends into the wallpaper. The image initially seduces with its visual mastery, almost like an advertisement, before revealing a muted tension, a kind of domestic suffocation.
Based in Chicago, this American artist has been exploring the complex territories of femininity and identity since the 1970s. Trained in graphic design at the University of Illinois and then in photography at the Illinois Institute of Technology, she has taught at prestigious institutions such as the Royal College of Art in London and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is now included in the permanent collections of MoMA in New York, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Anonymous WomenThis project, begun in 2013, continues her incisive exploration of the figure of the housewife, both emblematic and invisible in the collective imagination. Patty Carroll doesn't document reality; she constructs its representation from scratch. Each photograph is built in her studio like a life-size set, composed of carefully selected furniture, wallpaper, and objects. The shoot itself serves as the final step, the artist engaging in virtually no post-production, convinced that the magic lies in the physical construction.
This materiality gives the images a particular density. In smothered (In "Étouffée," 2017), the cushions are piled up until they literally bury the female body, from which only the legs still emerge. Accessory (In "Accessory," 2016), a silhouette is encircled by a profusion of bags, shoes, and hats, as if swallowed up by a consumerism that has become its identity. Further on, White Lies (White Lies, 2024) employs an almost clinical white monochrome, where the figure fades into an oppressive purity. Each work acts as a variation on the same motif: the entanglement of the woman and her interior, to the point of total confusion.
The work, however, is not limited to a straightforward critique. Patty Carroll introduces a biting humor that defuses any simplistic interpretation. The situations oscillate between the comic and the unsettling: a woman drowning in books in Booky (2016), another celebrating a melancholic solitude in Birthday Blues (Birthday Blues, 2021), a third blending into an entirely green setting in Green Screen (2021)... Her visual satire invites laughter as much as reflection. The artist herself describes her work as an exploration of the relationship between women and their homes, where one becomes an extension of the other – both satisfying and problematic, pathetic and humorous.
What is striking is how these images resonate today. While the traditional model of the housewife has evolved, its influence remains deeply embedded in contemporary representations. Carroll doesn't seek to update the subject matter at all costs; rather, she reveals its almost insidious persistence. Between incisive critique and empathetic gaze, her photographs become mental spaces where old injunctions are reenacted in new forms. Her anonymous women are not merely silhouettes: they are states of being, sensations, fragments of a universal experience.
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“Patty Carroll, Anonymous Women »
Gallery XII
14, rue des Jardins-Saint-Paul, Paris 4e
Until 2 May 2026
