Wilgefortis and the Bathing Gossips by Evelyn Albrow

In this new body of work for Collect 2026, I continue to explore alternative matriarchal utopias. The past, present and future meet on celestial and earth- bound planes, creating dreamy worlds inhabited by monsters, matrons, saints and goddesses. 

Inspired by contemporary and historical spiritual and secular utopias, from Beguinages (founded in 1200s) to everyday communes like the Maison de Babayagas (set up in 2014 in Paris), this work explores ideas around community, solidarity, and feminism. 

The Calliach, a powerful, ancient Gaelic matriarch,  guides them on journeys across the sea in search of new beginnings and their own terrestrial paradise, where, on the horizon, a Beguinage style community offers them respite within walled gardens. They can avail themselves of large baths, choir stalls, and a well-equipped alchemy workshop to prepare for their insurgency against the male-instigated apocalypse.

Wilgefortis and the Bathing Gossips

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 quiet women.  

Stoneware charger.

2026

52D cm