In Odalisque, Mona von Wittlage revisits Ingres’ timeless Valpinçon Bather, relocating her from the idealized sanctum of neoclassical painting into the quiet intimacy of a contemporary bathroom. The figure, drawn in blood and graphite, sits with her back exposed, a towel draped casually around her hips, her posture echoing the elegance of the past while fully grounded in the present.

The tiled wall, the potted plant, the ordinariness of the scene contrast with the sensual presence of the body, which becomes at once mundane and luminous. Blood stains the paper with fragility, reminding us that beauty is not eternal marble but living flesh, finite and vulnerable.

Odalisque collapses centuries into a single gesture: an homage, a reimagining, and a meditation on the way desire and intimacy continue to shape the human gaze.