Photographer Francesca Hummler unveils her first solo exhibition, Rituals & Reliquaries, in London this October.
Curated by Christiane Monarchi, Rituals & Reliquaries is a selection of Hummler’s work from her ongoing project, Rituals. Rituals, shot across five countries over two years, began during a workshop with Antoine d’Agata in the South of France, where Hummler experimented with self-portraiture within ancient Roman churches, engaging directly with the religious artifacts and iconography in her environment. What started as playful, semi-blasphemous imagery evolved into an examination of personal faith and the pressures that suppressed her sexuality as a teenager.
Rituals features tableau vivant compositions, where biblical parables are reimagined with irreverent humour and dark symbolism, subverting traditional religious narratives. Through these theatrical reenactments, Hummler reclaims her identity, reframing her relationship with the sacred on her own terms. Hummler also employs object-oriented ontology to explore the autonomy of religious objects and symbols, treating them as entities with their own presence in anomalous locations. The series reimagines sacred gestures through an aesthetic that blurs the boundary between human subjectivity and the agency of objects, inviting viewers into a dialogue on the role of faith in modern life.
Rituals confronts the purity culture of patriarchal American Protestantism, exploring how it shaped—and
stifled—Hummler’s gender identity and sexuality. Rituals addresses the pressure Hummler faced growing up in a conservative Christian family, where the expectation to marry and start a family is non-negotiable. As the first in her lineage to remain unmarried at her age, she is breaking conventions that have constrained women in her family. Rooted in her practice of therapeutic self-portraiture, Hummler also collaborated with friends, their presence interrupting the echo chamber of oppressive narratives she was raised with.
Francesca Hummler presents a thought-provoking and seductive photographic enquiry into the construction of the contemporary self in this selection of images from Rituals to be shared with viewers for the first time in the labyrinth of The Crypt Gallery, an apt setting of hushed corridors and confessional spaces to consider ideas of spirituality, identity, ritual and performance in these deeply personal and collaborative works.
– Christiane Monarchi
Francesca Hummler: Rituals & Reliquaries October 1st – 6th, Crypt Gallery
Public Opening October 4th, 6PM – 9PM with an artist talk between Francesca Hummler and curator Christiane Monarchi at 6:30 pm.
About the artist
Francesca Hummler (b. 1997) is a German-American visual artist and researcher working with photography currently based in London, England. Interested in issues regarding identity, she draws from her experience as the daughter of German immigrants in the United States to explore the archive, familial intimacy, and generational trauma. Influenced by the concept of photo-therapy Francesca often utilizes self-portraiture to untangle her sense of self. She often expands her therapeutic practices to photograph others collaboratively. Hummler earned a Master’s in Photography with distinction for her dissertation, “American Identity and Photographic Healing”, from The Royal College of Art in 2022. Hummler won the Carte Blanche Étudiants award in 2021 and the Young TalentAward from the Vonovia Award for Photography in 2022.
Christiane Monarchi is the founding editor of Photomonitor, which has published more than 1,400 features since 2011. In 2020 she co-founded Hapax Magazine, a bi-annual print publication commissioning new photographic ideas. She regularly reviews artists’ portfolios, mentors artists and has served on the boards of several not-for-profit art institutions, including Photofusion. Currently she is a Trustee of the Centre for British Photography.
