Juno Calypso: The Salon

Juno Calypso's art is beguiling, surreal, and grippingly odd. Two decades worth of self portraits have seen her stage herself as a fictional character named ‘Joyce’, who she uses 'to reenact the private underlife of a woman consumed by the laboured construct of femininity, carried out to the point of ritualised absurdity.' With an absolutely stellar CV – having already exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, The Photographer's Gallery, the Tate Modern and the Great Women Artists exhibition – Juno Calypso is indeed one to watch, if not already on your radar.

Her newest project, an immersive installation at the Galeria Melissa in Covent Garden, is an eerie, fantasy beauty space. A gathering of imaginary mannequin-clients inhabit 'The Salon', one being a cast model of Juno, staying true to her well-established self-subjectification. Questions of identity, self-love and self-care are raised in the multi-disciplinary installation that integrates sculpture, film, fashion and technology. Juno tells us, ‘people try and criticise femininity, but the problem isn’t what we’re doing its the way we’re treated for doing it.’

Juno Calypso, The Salon, Galeria Melissa

Viewers are welcomed by a flirtatious embrace of softness and pink, exhaled from a 3D video animation created by design duo GERIKO. The blushing frivolity disappears on descent to the basement, flooded by red light. Anonymity and moodiness reigns, and dressing gown-clad figures stare out in ghostly illuminated masks.

In some ways, it is an interactive exhibition. While the mannequins are off limits, viewers are invited to try on the masks, two of which hang from the ceiling, and mirrors are there to take selfies with.

Juno said, 'As both an artist and a life-long member of the cult of beauty, I’m entranced by the spaces in which ‘self-improvement’ is performed. I love that wherever you are in the world you can find this space in some form. You follow an address and may end up in somebody’s house, or in the basement of an office block. Like a makeshift place of worship.'

Juno Calypso, The Salon, Galeria Melissa, Still From GERIKO's animated video

We are living in a moment where technology is transforming the beauty industry and its salons, products for personal preening are met with cult-like fascination, and social media is championing physical aesthetics above all. Both self-care and self-love are rising up to meet pressures and oppressions opposed upon women, and Calypso asks ‘why do we need to take care of ourselves - what’s damaged us in the first place?’

The exhibition is free, and runs from the 15th of February til mid-April.

Juno Calypso, The Salon, Galeria Melissa