Mood Swings

Overview

PUBLIC OPENING

October 30, 2025, 4 – 7 pm

Avenue Louise 430, Brussels 1050

In the presence of the artist

MARUANI MERCIER is delighted to present Bea Scaccia: Mood Swings, the exhibition of new paintings by the artist, opening at our Brussels gallery on 30 October 2025. In Mood Swings, meticulously rendered objects of adornment interweave, ripple and twist, enshrouding the female figure in the composition. Illuminated by the soft glow of twinkle lights, layers of shoes, jewels and beads appear both desirable and strange, humorous and uncanny, as if animated by a mysterious force in a fairy-tale realm. Sweeping across each painting, Scaccia’s complex arrangements interrogate the notion of beauty and the tropes of female representation, at once questioning the human longing for objects as signifiers of identity and social roles.

Portraying moments of powerful motion and stillness, the works in the exhibition allude to shifting states of the human body, as well as the perpetual ‘swings’ in moods and perceptions of contemporary society. In Cake, candle, swing, flying shoe, colourful stockings. Am I not perfectly alive?, the figure dynamically flies across the space on a swing, seemingly unbridled by the excess of shimmering beads and clothes. Evoking Goya’s expressive portrayals of people on a swing, as well as Fragonard’s iconic painting of a female figure parting with her shoe in mid-air, the work projects a sense of joy and freedom of flight. Balancing a cake and a candle, the composition also suggests a meditation on the passage of time and the varying pace of personal change. Counter to the demands placed on physical beauty to remain unchanging and static, Scaccia’s figures are invariably in the process of becoming, and in a kind of humorous triumph over the fixation on the flawless female presence.

In I don’t mischievously lose my shoes anymore, an arrangement of shoes, necklaces and costumes fills the composition, reflecting Scaccia’s profound interest in fairy tales. Considering the ways in which these familiar stories impact our conception of the roles of women in society, the artist subverts the conventional narrative, placing the figure in an active ascent over the surrounding objects. Featuring a cat as a companion to the protagonist, Scaccia also reflects on the close association of women and animals in many fairy tales. As the artist notes, “the association of women and animals once again points at the notion of the mood swings – women are often represented as unpredictable, like animals. Cats in particular are always deeply associated with women because of that attitude that they have, you cannot actually dominate them.”

Navigating the collections of objects, the figures in each painting remain concealed by their possessions, as if masking their true self. Amplifying adornment into disguise, Scaccia questions the necessity of objects for constructing one’s identity in contemporary culture. Vigorously traversing the composition or stepping above the accumulated objects, her subjects appear in a balancing act between performing for and find freedom from societal expectations, a push and pull between the absurdity of our everyday concerns and the poignancy of the human condition.