[ PROJECT SUMMARY ]

“Either the wallpaper goes or I do”,  quipped Irish Poet & Playwright Oscar Wilde during the last weeks of his life in 1900. The offending decor in question was that of his room at L’Hotel in Paris, wherein he passed away shortly after. 

From 1996-97, British artist Maggi Hambling painted ‘Wilde and The Wallpaper’, an imagining of Wilde and what might be seen as a hallucination of the tormenting patterns, which subsequently disappeared into the archives of Marlborough Gallery for almost three decades.

Curator Daniel Malarkey brought the story of Wilde and the Wallpaper full circle during Paris Art Week in October 2023, exhibiting Hambling’s work in the very room where Wilde lived and died.

Fitzbrien were asked by Malarkey to create a video portrait of Hambling and her work in situ, her signature cigarette in hand.