Hilton Als curates 'Postures' exhibition exploring Jean Rhys's Creole world at Michael Werner Gallery

Hilton Als curated 'Postures: Jean Rhys in the Modern World' at Michael Werner Gallery in London, open through 22 November 2025. The exhibition acts as a collective portrait of author Jean Rhys and her Creole world, inspired by her novel Wide Sargasso Sea from 1966. Rhys, born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams in Dominica in 1890, adopted her pen name in the 1920s under Ford Madox Ford's influence. Her life included rebellion, chorus girl work, three marriages, and two children before gaining fame with her prequel to Jane Eyre. The show features diverse artworks addressing themes of race, empire, and gender. In the first room, Kara Walker's West Indies (2014), Celia Paul's Charlotte (2019), and Victor Man's Girl with Goya's Skull (Memorable Equinox) (2021) establish key motifs. A second room shifts to a European demimonde with pieces by Eugène Atget, Cynthia Lahti, Winold Reiss, Brassaï, and Hans Bellmer, reflecting Rhys's Paris years and early novels like After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931). Abstract works by Walter Price, such as Red Line (2025), appear without explanation. A penultimate room displays 69 historical photographs of Dominican life from the early 1900s. The final space includes Rhys's floral-print housedress alongside Leon Kossoff's Seated Nude No. 1 (1963) and Kara Walker's untitled watercolor sequence (2015–16). While the exhibition's rationale can be elusive, it aims to evoke Rhys's interior and exterior worlds, particularly the colonial Caribbean.