Evelyn Albrow’s practice is inspired by contemporary and historical utopias, both spiritual and secular, ranging from Beguinages (founded in the 1200s) to everyday communes like the Maison de Babayagas (set up in 2014 in Paris). Her ceramics tell stories of matriarchal utopias, with each piece showing a dreamy world inhabited by monsters, matrons, saints, and goddesses meeting on celestial planes; through this Evelyn explore ideas around community, solidarity, and feminism.

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St Wilgefortis shares a drink in a large bathtub with a friend wearing an eye patch. Wilgefortis is also known as St Uncumber. One of the many virgin martyr saints killed by men, she was murdered by her father because she rebelliously grew a beard to avoid being married off against her will. When she’s prayed to, oats are left at her shrine to disencumber themselves of unwanted husbands.

Wilgefortis’ bathtub is decorated with Cyana, a Greek diver known for destroying Persian navy ships in 480 BC. As a fire warms their tub from below, they are surrounded by potion bottles and scattered shoes (inspired by the V&A’s online archives). They bathe in a room full of friends, or gossips, a word I’ve repurposed from Silvia Federici as a positive name for female friend and companion: “Women cooperated with each other in every aspect of their life. They sewed, washed their clothes, and gave birth surrounded by other women, with men rigorously excluded from the chamber of the delivering one.” It was only through the rise of capitalism from the 1500s onwards that the word became a derogatory tool to silence women.

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Painted and glazed stoneware.

2026