Central to Bestia is an exploration of desire as a source of vitality, which is nurtured rather than suppressed. Influenced by texts such as Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1978) and Jack Halberstam’s Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (2020), Camil positions the instinctual as a catalyst for liberation. Drawing on Lorde’s conception of embodied knowledge as a source of agency and self-knowledge, Camil considers it a force that reconnects us with joyous possibilities. For the artist, an insistence on pleasure becomes the alternative to being confronted with increasingly restrictive socio-political constructs.
The title Bestia carries a deliberate ambiguity that mirrors the exhibition’s investigation into the relationship between context and interpretation: in Spanish, bestia can signify both exceptional prowess and carry pejorative animalistic connotations. This fluidity echoes Camil’s reclamation of female sexuality as an act of empowerment rather than shame, a shift personified by Lady Godiva. In Camil’s reinterpretation, Lady Godiva is transformed into a monumental inflatable sculpture, marking the artist’s exploration of a new medium. Reimagined as a hybrid figure, in Camil’s reinterpretation Lady Godiva and her horse merge into a single larger-than-life form. Part mythological heroine, part monstrous presence, this character embodies the unruly and transformative potential of desire. Through Lady Godiva, Camil revisits stories historically tied to spectacle and stigma, reframing them through a lens of liberation.
Perspective underpins Bestia; by subverting established conventions, Camil unsettles the cultural assumptions and shame long attached to female sexuality. The artist incorporates wooden shutters into her paintings, transforming the canvas into a threshold between public and private worlds, and inviting viewers to peer into scenes of intimacy. Evoking a subtle sense of voyeurism, the shutters simultaneously reveal and obscure, making the audience an active participant in the works. By inverting inside and outside, Camil prompts a continual shift in viewpoint, both physical, through the works’ architectural framing, and conceptual, through the position the works suggest.
Bestia advances Camil’s ongoing commitment to questioning entrenched societal structures. By subverting conventional ways of seeing and presenting desire as a source of power and renewal, the exhibition foregrounds self-authorship as both a personal and collective act. In doing so, Camil opens a space for alternative futures to emerge; ones rooted in not restriction or repression, but in open dialogue and shared experience.
Curated by Maria do Carmo M.P. de Pontes.
Pia Camil: Bestia will run from 9th October – 22nd November 2026, at Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s Exmouth Market location, open Wednesday through Sunday, 12 – 6 pm or by appointment. A Private View will be held on 8th October 2026, 6 – 8 pm.
