Cece Philips

Born 1996, UK

Lives and works in London, UK

Cece Philips lives and works in London. She recently earned her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in London. Philips’ luminous compositions explore ideas of spectatorship and voyeurism. Embodying the role and spirit of the flâneur, or flâneuse, and drawing on a multitude of sources; from the archive, film stills, found imagery, and memory, she weaves together historical and contemporary influences to interrogate ideas of interiority, desire and loneliness. Framing is a recurring device in Philips’ paintings, through windows and doorways, barriers and veils are constructed to challenge an easy reading of her female protagonists. Often situated within the night, the settings surrounding her figures have symbolic and metaphorical weight, investigating interior and exterior worlds, while drawing on ideas of power, performance and gender, to imagine both a different subject and viewer. The palette, as well as the attention to light and space, all lend the work a psychological and narrative depth—details that lead us through and beyond the work, and activate the viewer’s own imagination.