What happens when our comfort zone shatters, and we face the chasm between how we perceive ourselves and others’ expectations, failing to meet them? A profound sense of disorientation, social and spatial confusion, and the realization of internal inconsistency emerge. This leads to the small compromises needed to survive and gain gratification, just enough to move forward. This is precisely the experience of young Esther, the protagonist of The Bell Jar (1963), the sole novel by American writer Sylvia Plath (Jamaica Plain, 1932 – London 1963).
A failure overwhelms her, making her realize she has always been confined under a ‘bell jar.’ From this autobiographical perspective, Sylvia Plath unsparingly describes depression, anxiety, and the struggle and inability to reject the patterns imposed by 1950s society. The exhibition of the same name, co-curated by Massimiliano Maglione and open until April 24 at the MONTI8 gallery in Rome’s San Lorenzo district, draws its title directly from the novel by the writer, who died by suicide in London at just 30, months before the book’s publication. Central to the collective artists’ exploration is the symbolic image of the bell jar itself, which intuitively serves as both a metaphor for excessive protection, even deprivation and individual repression, and, in a more positive light, a tool for safeguarding delicate and precious objects.
Naomi Hawksley’s (USA, 2000) installation Untitled (2026) stands out, featuring an old cot used by the artist as a frame for a graphite drawing on parchment and paper, in which a young woman seems to reflect. One wonders if she recognizes herself in the image before her and what existential division she is experiencing.
However, Hawksley’s figure remains relatively clear and recognizable, unlike that outlined by Mounir Eddib (Belgium, 1995) in his painting The Pit (2026), where a pervasive sense of intense unease and isolation dominates. The Belgian artist takes us deeper into the human abyss, fully revealing the drama that, conversely, Naomi Hawksley delicately sketches in the immediately preceding phase of disavowal and rupture. Furthermore, with his painting Unshaken (2006) and the installation Insider-Outsider (2026), Mounir Eddib even dismantles the last vestiges of comfort for the visitor. The confrontation with our inner demons – he seems to suggest – cannot be approached with half-measures, a sentiment also evident in the unsettling work of Ruby Chen (China, 2001), In a Building That Is Falling Apart (2025), and Camilla Alberti’s (Italy, 1994) installation Saltational Monsters (2024). From this perspective emerges a pain that drags one into a dark, one-dimensional realm, from which redemption is hard to find. The resulting solitude appears scarcely decipherable or comprehensible to outside observers.
In the chiaroscuro of a room with The Kitchen (2026) or the perspectival light of stairs with Stairs (2026), Steffen Kern (Germany, 1988) unveils a dreamlike, partly figurative condition, amplified by his choice to use pastels on paper, similar to Stephen Buscemi’s (USA, 1998) work Small Song (2024). In contrast, with Amber Wynne-Jones’s (USA, 2003) paintings, Art of Mirrors (2025) and Dancer, Driver (2025), the sensation is one of reappropriating the intimate dimension, a reconciliation of the rupture between self and world, tracing back to the origin of pain, eloquently expressed by her choice to introduce a palette of colors not seen in the other exhibited works.
From that bell jar, from which Sylvia Plath’s character attempts to break free, emerges a suspension of reality, a modern alienation, a barrier to self-narration, a disintegration of identity and language that collectively produce a sense of social estrangement, keenly observed by the exhibiting artists. The Bell Jar thus offers a space for reflection on one’s own condition and the necessity of re-engaging with self-awareness as a tool for observing reality.
By challenging perceptual automatisms and interpretive habits, visitors can reclaim their observational autonomy; they are allowed to linger in the gray areas, in the ambiguity and uncertainty of their emotional state. The exhibition leaves an open question, suggesting that awareness of one’s inner identity is built through a continuous, often fragile, yet necessary and fruitful process.
