Baby Reni's BEUTE: A Showroom Without Products at Das Leben am Haverkamp

Baby Reni, the artistic alias of Irene Ha, presents BEUTE, a solo exhibition at Das Leben am Haverkamp in The Hague from May 30 to June 21, 2026. The exhibition is staged as a showroom devoid of products, featuring large-scale photographs resembling high-end beauty campaigns. The title BEUTE derives from a typo by photographer Nikola Lamburov, who misspelled 'BEAUTY' on a shared drive; it also means 'booty' or 'prey' in German. Ha studied fashion at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and views Baby Reni as a 'fictitious agency' rather than a single artist, collaborating closely with Lamburov, makeup artist Kathinka Gernant, and models Yade Noe, Thu-Anh Nguyen, and Ren Takagi. The work critiques the fashion industry's duality: the glossy commercial facade versus the craftsmanship and hidden labor, often by women. Ha's grandmother ran a sewing atelier in a Vietnamese village, now continued by her aunt, producing school uniforms and wedding dresses. Ha also founded the Baby Reni Foundation, an art space in her living room hosting exhibitions by female and queer artists. Previous works include BOWS (2025), two oversized sculptural bows—one velvet black, one polka-dot pink—elevating decoration to art. The photographs in BEUTE show lips with lipstick, including traces of residue on the lipstick cases, breaking the perfect beauty campaign aesthetic.