Isabella Benshimol’s solo exhibition, The Phantom of Liberty, takes its title from Luis Buñuel’s 1974 surrealist film, which subversively deconstructs the social and moral norms that govern society. Facing Berlin’s historic avenue, Kurfürstendamm, the cross-section of a seemingly typical apartment, composed of a bedroom, bathroom, hallway, entrance, and dining room, becomes the stage for a play of tension between private and public.

This site-specific installation incorporates familiar fragments of everyday life. Comprising architectural elements, furniture, lingerie, worn clothing, and various other textiles preserved in epoxy resin and silicone, the space is imbued with a spectral presence. Each seems to carry the fluids, the memories of an absent body, revealing a hollowed-out narrative suspended in time.

Benshimol transforms Les Vitrines into a tableau of a domestic interior where fossils of ordinary actions become images that unfold as in a film, coming to life in sync with the footsteps of passersby. Heightening the space between the shown and the hidden, the exhibition is set in motion under our voyeuristic gaze, while authority and conventions are laid bare, revealing their absurdities. Absent walls and suggested spaces expose a raw transparency, where power relations come to the fore and intimacy is more political than ever.