When tongues came out, we weren’t ready belongs to the final group of works in Bea Scaccia’s recent series, born from her fascination with the image of the swing. The starting point ranges from the irony and tension in Goya’s depictions of elderly figures on swings to the seductive theatricality of Fragonard’s Les Hasards Heureux de l’escarpolette. From there, Scaccia began to meditate on the word “swing” itself and its layered cultural associations: shifting moods, emotional volatility, and the way femininity is often framed in societal discourse as unpredictable or hormonally determined.

Her interest in words and their play leads the term further, toward dancing, rhythm, and the contemporary connotation of “swingers” — couples navigating fluid identities and relationships. Identity here becomes a performance, a series of roles or masks, constantly shifting in and out of place. Scaccia has long been drawn to moments of suspension, where the narrative hovers between action and aftermath. She differentiates works that capture motion from those that inhabit the charged stillness after something has occurred. This painting occupies that threshold: something has happened, yet time feels held, unresolved.

Recurring motifs that trace across the series reappear — a birdhouse, unruly textiles, ambiguous sculptural creatures. The work evolved from a rapid sketch, executed with the instinct and immediacy more often associated with abstract painting. A looping ribbon structure anchors the composition, allowing disparate elements to settle into rhythm. In this piece, Scaccia embraces a vivid new palette, introducing an intense blue for the first time and working with a horizon line, which lends the picture depth and an almost enclosure, as though the action unfolds in a charged interior space.