Lydia Pettit

Using her own image as both subject and metaphor, Lydia Pettit’s practice explores themes of self-identity, trauma and the politics of the body. Through self-portraiture, she examines Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the ways in which images of women are historically constructed, using her own body to challenge idealised notions of femininity and beauty while confronting the complex effects of objectification, shame and vulnerability. Drawing primarily upon horror cinema, alongside references to folklore and mythology, she transforms states of fear, anger and desire into recurring figures and symbolic motifs, using the visual language of horror to explore tensions between recovery and regression, tenderness and violence, and empowerment and victimhood. Frequently describing PTSD as a ‘haunted house’, Pettit’s self-portraiture functions as a means of navigating psychological conflict and recovery, addressing broader questions surrounding mental health, sexual abuse and the representation of the female body.

Lydia Pettit was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1991. She received a BFA in Painting, with a concentration in Photography, from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014, before completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2020. Pettit received Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants in 2014 and 2016, was a semi-finalist for the Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize in 2018, and was awarded the Jealous Prize in 2020. She also participated in the Xenia Creative Retreat Residency in 2022. Pettit has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions including The Well at Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva (2021); Introductions at White Cube, London (2022); and In Your Anger, I See Fear at Galerie Judin, Berlin (2023). Selected group exhibitions include Tomorrow: London at White Cube, London (2020); London Grads Now at Saatchi Gallery, London (2020); IRL at Timothy Taylor, London (2021); New Contemporaries at South London Gallery, London (2021); Looking Like Fire at Sim Smith, London (2023); Sirani at Galerie Judin, Berlin (2023); and Bitches in Heat at Guts Gallery, London (2024). Pettit currently lives and works in London.