Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery has announced a new exhibition of sculpture by artist and designer Nicole Farhi. Farhi will display 25 hand-sculpted ceramic busts, each depicting victims of miscarriages of justice across multiple countries around the world over the past 125 years. The exhibition portrays victims whose wrongful convictions have shaped legal history.
The exhibition takes its name from J’Accuse…! — Émile Zola’s famous open letter that exposed the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in France in 1898. Inspired by Dreyfus’s case, Farhi has spent the past two years researching and sculpting figures from around the world who have been unjustly accused, from Timothy Evans, whose wrongful execution helped abolish capital punishment in Britain, to Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2023, leading to the resignation of Helen Pitcher, Chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
J’Accuse…! invites visitors to consider the people behind these cases. Each bust, crafted with personal care, offers a portrait of an individual who endured years, even decades, of wrongful imprisonment, some faced torture, some lost their lives.
A celebrated designer turned full-time sculptor, Nicole Farhi CBE is widely known for her eponymous fashion brand but has dedicated the past two decades to her artistic practice. Having trained under Jean Gibson and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, she has exhibited at Gainsborough’s House and The Harley Gallery. Farhi, a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, has often focused on the human form, and J’Accuse…! marks a new focus — one that uses portraiture to depict the victims behind cases that have made legal and political history.
Nicole Farhi said:
“This latest series, which explores miscarriages of justice, is the most personal and deeply felt of all. These are the men and women to whom irrevocable wrong was done. The only thing anyone can now do is look them in the eye, see them plain, and commit them to memory. Not forgetting them is the greatest service we can offer.”
Clare Gough, Director of Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, said:
“Nicole Farhi’s work focuses on the people behind the headlines whose lives have been shaped by injustice. Pitzhanger provides a space where visitors can reflect on these important stories.”
J’Accuse…! Sculptures by Nicole Farhi, 19th March – 15th June 2025 Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery
J’Accuse…! will be accompanied by a programme of public events, including:
A conversation between Nicole Farhi and celebrated solicitor, advocate, and writer Anthony Julius. Julius is Deputy Chairman of Mishcon de Reya and is best known for representing Diana, Princess of Wales, in her divorce and Deborah Lipstadt in a landmark libel suit brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving — later dramatised in the film Denial (2016), written by Farhi’s husband, David Hare. The date and tickets to be announced soon.
About the artist
Nicole Farhi studied art and fashion in Paris in the late 1960s. Her career as a fashion designer took off so quickly that she put art aside and concentrated on fashion. However, twelve years later, having started her own business and feeling restless, she decided she wanted to return to making art. She trained with Jean Gibson (1935–1991) throughout the 1980s and was mentored by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) after meeting in 1985.
For over 30 years, Farhi had to fit sculpting around fashion. In 2012, two years after the Nicole Farhi label was sold, Farhi showed her last collection and then was free to walk away from fashion to sculpt full-time. Her debut exhibition was at the Bowman Gallery, London in 2014 and since then, she has gone on to have several successful solo exhibitions including at The Fine Art Society, Edinburgh and London; Beaux Arts, London; CCA Galleries International, Jersey, and museum exhibitions at Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury in 2019 and Harley Gallery, Welbeck in 2023. Farhi is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
