Ames Yavuz is proud to announce Confront and Constrain, a group exhibition presenting works by Annie Cabigting, Makiko Harris, Yifan Jiang, Anya Paintsil and Anna Perach. The exhibition brings together five female-identifying artists who look at how one might think, experience and talk about freedom, and conversely the various ways in which one faces the challenges and inevitabilities of constraint — whether cultural, social, familial, gender-based or professional.

Leading Filipino artist Annie Cabigting (b. 1971) presents My own black painting, continuing her investigations on the viewing and presentation of art connected to institutional critique. My own black painting not only opens up a conversation around modern art and what an artwork should be, it also acts as a statement challenging who is given permission to make such artworks.

Japanese-American artist Makiko Harris (b. 1989) questions what it means to connect, or be “skintimate,” in an era where touch is often mediated by screens, debuting new works that explore the complex dynamics of spectatorship, voyeurism and the body. Her practice uses the body as both image and commodity, manipulating cropped images of herself into laser-cut steel and oversized, lacquered nails, embodying both the sharp, industrial precision of technology and the intimate vulnerability of flesh.

Working in Chinese Gongbi (工笔) painting, Yifan Jiang (b. 1992) presents The End of Summer Day, an ink on silk painting that reconstructs narratives related to cultural memory. Through the reappearance of traditional Chinese painting elements, myths and literary metaphors, Jiang draws from the collective unconscious and creates an immersive spectacle on the edge of dreams, reflecting upon her relationships to herself, others and motherhood.

Textile artist Anya Paintsil (b. 1993) draws inspiration from her childhood in North Wales and her ancestral Fante tradition of figurative textiles, creating striking large-scale portraits. Often mistaken as subversions of ‘primitivism’, Paintsil’s works deliberately resist the European canon and are instead grounded in traditional West African crafts and art — carvings, wood sculptures, masks — exchanging hard materials for soft in an interrogation of gendered labour.

Anna Perach (b.1985) examines how private narratives are deeply rooted in ancient folklore and storytelling. Her works use the technique of tufting to weave female archetypes into sculptural hybrids, unravelling ideas of identity, gender roles and craft. She will also present new watercolours as part of Confront and Constrain, extending on these themes through vivid and unsettling domestic scenarios.