In Athens, the caryatid is a familiar figure: a woman who carries the weight of a building on her head. In Rachel Feinstein’s Fates, that architectural role becomes a starting point for thinking about women, the stories told about them and the responsibilities they carry. Her first exhibition in Greece brings sculptures, paintings on mirrors and works on paper to Gagosian Athens, where it runs until 9 January 2027.
Helen of Troy meets Petra von Kant
Two monumental caryatids, Helen and Petra, give the exhibition its most direct connection to Greek antiquity. Helen holds an apple, linking her to the mythology surrounding Helen of Troy. Petra takes her name and inspiration from the central character in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Together, they bring an ancient mythological figure and a character from twentieth-century cinema into the same architectural form.
The pairing invites visitors to look at each woman as an individual. Their clothes, faces and identifying objects give them distinct personalities, even as they share the task of supporting a capital. For Feinstein, the caryatid expresses the way women sustain the world and its social structures. Seen through that idea, the weight above each figure becomes as significant as the figure beneath it.
Their pastel surfaces also offer a useful connection with the ancient city outside the gallery. Greek sculpture’s familiar marble appearance can make colour seem like a contemporary addition, yet Feinstein’s painted figures refer to the polychromy of ancient caryatids. Visitors who know the figures of the Erechtheion can approach these works through that shared history, then consider how clothing and expression change their reading of the female form.
Looking at the past through a mirror
Elsewhere, Feinstein turns to ancient funerary monuments. Her mirror paintings borrow figures and architectural forms from the steles that marked Greek graves. The reflective surface introduces the viewer into this encounter with the past: looking at the work also means seeing something of the room and oneself within it.
This gives the exhibition a quieter register. A memorial preserves an image of someone absent, while a mirror catches the presence of whoever stands before it. Moving between those two functions encourages a slower kind of looking, with attention shifting between the painted figure, the surrounding space and the visitor’s own reflection.
The mirror paintings appear alongside Red, a sculptural relief of a dog lying on a slab. Feinstein created the work to commemorate a friend, and it prompted her interest in the form of the funerary stele. Its personal origin brings the exhibition’s treatment of memory into the artist’s own life.
Ancient stories and everyday life
The circular works on paper draw on imagery from classical ceramics, extending the exhibition’s conversation with antiquity beyond the caryatids. Their rounded format encourages the eye to follow the scene as a whole, then return to its gestures and smaller details.
A related group of sculptures takes designs from ancient Athenian black- and red-figure vases into three dimensions. Figures that once occupied a painted surface extend around hollow, amphora-shaped forms. The shift invites visitors to consider how a familiar scene changes when it gains depth and can be viewed from several sides.
For foreign residents discovering Athens, Fates offers an accessible point of entry into contemporary art through forms they may already recognise from museums and archaeological sites. It is worth taking time with the relationship between the works: the upright caryatids, the reflective memorials and the circular painted scenes each ask for a different way of looking. That variety gives familiar Greek references room to acquire personal and contemporary meanings.
Visiting the exhibition
Rachel Feinstein: Fates is at Gagosian, 22 Anapiron Polemou Street, Athens, until 9 January 2027. The gallery opens Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–7pm, with extended hours until 8pm on Thursdays. Check the gallery’s exhibition page before visiting for any changes to opening hours.
Sources
Gagosian’s official press release, 14 September 2026, the official exhibition page and Gagosian’s press-image captions and credits.
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