The Act of Becoming Adèle Aproh at Scroll
by Mer Mora, March 30, 2026
In her solo exhibition Performance Cancelled at Scroll, Adèle Aproh does not treat the backstage as hidden or transitional; instead, she repositions it as the site where femininity is actually produced. Her figures are caught mid-preparation: lacing a corset, applying makeup, or adjusting a slipper—they're getting ready for a performance that, in Aproh's world, never arrives. What happens backstage is no longer private; Aproh frames it as an exposure, a form of labor carried out in plain sight. By taking this process and placing it in a state of suspension, she redirects our attention to what is usually concealed—the construction behind the effortless image of femininity.
Aproh creates dense compositions in which multiple moments unfold simultaneously. Drawing inspiration from comics and graphic novels, she works with colored pencils and pastels that slowly accumulate layer by layer, embedding a sense of duration into the work. It is almost impossible to focus on a specific point while viewing her works. Instead, the gaze moves across the composition, encountering moments that reflect ongoing acts of adjustment and control.
In the largest piece of the show, Tight (2025), a number of figures appear in motion—some interacting with others and some looking directly at the viewer—but all performing the beauty rituals that we see throughout the exhibition. As you look closer, the eye is immediately pulled to a figure at the center of the composition, which stands still against the chaos built around her. She is mid-expression, and she looks slightly uncomfortable while another figure helps her get into a corset. The corset—a symbol recurring throughout the show and an item closely associated with femininity—is not just a costume choice for Aproh, but a structural argument. The silhouette comes to be through constraint and tension. Her figures are not simply wearing these; they are being shaped by them. Femininity is not natural or effortless; it is something produced and endured, tightened from the outside in.
Adèle Aproh, Pin Prick, 2026, colored pencil and pastel on paper, 7 3/4 x 6 in. Images courtesy of the artist and Scroll
Pin Prick (2026) takes this to a quieter register. Across three smaller paintings, a single figure appears in sequence: first facing us, then the front of her body unlaced, and finally her back turned, holding a knife behind it. It’s a quiet scene in comparison to the density of the works around it, but the constraint is the same. The corset is still there, but in this scene the figure is aware of its constraint. This moment of awareness does not resolve the tension, though; instead, it is situated within the spaces where these transformations unfold.
The scenes Aproh presents take place in interior settings—a dressing room, a hair salon, or a bar—spaces that function as thresholds rather than fixed environments. Not fully private but not public either, they are transitional spaces where Aproh holds the figures in a state of becoming, where identity is actively being assembled. It remains unclear what the women are preparing for, and the absence is the point. The lack of narrative resolution is what reinforces this instability. These spaces contain the figures but also intensify their exposure, making visible the conditions under which the body is constructed.
Adèle Aproh, Rush Hour, 2025, colored pencil and pastel on paper, 52 1/4 x 59 in. Images courtesy of the artist and Scroll
In Rush Hour (2025), we see the same rituals of preparation unfold across a crowded scene—some figures partially undressed—while at the center a character is enclosed in what looks like a magician’s box. The nude figures here carry none of the stillness or composure that usually accompanies the exposed female body in painting. They are rushed, pressed together, focused, and uninterested. Busy being engaged in the labor that it is to become rather than presenting themselves for view. The body is exposed because it is mid-transformation, not because it is on display. Aproh makes nudity structural rather than seductive: a necessary condition of the process and not an invitation. And yet some figures look directly out at the viewer, collapsing the distance between observer and observed. The gaze does not belong to us; it belongs to the women it depicts. Exposure is not vulnerability but clarity, an account of the labor and control that are beneath the creation of femininity.
Performance Cancelled reframes femininity as something staged and constantly negotiated. By withholding the final performance, Aproh turns our attention to everything it is designed to hide: the discipline, repetition, and gap between what is shown and what is kept out of sight. Here, the backstage is not the preparation for the spectacle but the spectacle itself. By the time we leave the exhibition, what lingers is not the unfinished state of the figures but the recognition of what finishing requires, and how thoroughly that requirement has been assimilated.