Gagosian Bustes de Femmes by India Mahdavi: Color as Scenography in Paris
In 2020, Gagosian marked a decade at its central Paris gallery with Bustes de Femmes, an exhibition devoted to representations of women across painting, sculpture and photography. India Mahdavi was invited to shape the scenography, bringing a vivid architectural counterpart to works by artists from different periods and disciplines. The commission returned to a shared history: Mahdavi had also contributed to the gallery's first FIAC presentation in 2010, making the anniversary an opportunity to revisit the relationship between art, colour and display.
The gallery wall becomes an active participant
For this exhibition, Mahdavi worked with colour as a surface that could frame artworks rather than as a device for physically sculpting the room. Her own project archive describes that distinction clearly. Instead of assuming that white walls provide the only acceptable background, the design offered each work a chromatic context. The choices were not intended to mimic the palette of the art. Their purpose was to establish complementary relationships, allowing differences between works to stand out.
Flowers: an interior palette inside an art exhibition
The gallery's official account identifies hues from Mahdavi's 2019 Flowers colour collection as central to the installation. These colours brought warmth and visual rhythm to the rooms, with moments of white operating as intentional pauses in the sequence. Such a strategy changes the visitor's pace. Moving between saturated surfaces and quieter intervals, the eye is invited to register both the artwork and the space that makes it visible.
Portraiture and an expanded sense of representation
Bustes de Femmes presented modern and contemporary responses to the female figure, across different artistic languages. That range created a demanding curatorial environment: individual works needed room for their own histories and interpretations. The scenography established continuity without insisting that all works belonged to one visual style. In this way, the architectural setting helped hold together a collective exhibition whose power lay partly in its contrasts.
Physical and virtual exhibition design
Gagosian also planned digital presentation alongside the Paris installation. That detail places the project within a broader change in exhibition practice, in which a spatial concept must communicate both to visitors physically present and to audiences encountering its documentation. Mahdavi's decisive colour choices provide a recognisable visual identity across those forms of access, while the works remain the reason for both encounters.
A case study in expressive restraint
The most revealing aspect of Bustes de Femmes is not the intensity of its colour but its discipline. The installation demonstrates that a designer may introduce a strong point of view without overwhelming a curatorial argument. Here, colour is a mediator between artworks, and the gallery becomes a carefully composed interior whose architectural authorship remains in dialogue with the exhibition.
Project credits and references
Exhibition: Bustes de Femmes, Gagosian Paris, 2020. Scenography: India Mahdavi. Photography: Thomas Lannes, courtesy Gagosian. Artworks remain the property of their respective rights holders.
Primary references: https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2020/bustes-de-femmes-paris-10th-anniversary-exhibition/ | https://india-mahdavi.com/en/projects/interiors/74-gagosian-buste-de-femmes | https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/india-mahdavi-gagosian-paris-10th-anniversary
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