Simard Bilodeau Contemporary is pleased to present El baño, a solo exhibition of new works by Cuban artist Gabriela Reyna on view from 29 March to 26 April 2025. In a continuation of her Bathroom series, Reyna conceives the titular space as a locale of shared emotional and physical intimacy.

It is here, in the privacy of the domestic realm, that the quiet scenes of routinary life between the artist and her partner are framed. With a tenderness rarely afforded to the contemporary toilette, Reyna identifies the bathroom as one of the most vulnerable spaces in the home, where nudity—in both the corporeal and figurative sense—takes centre stage. It is the nucleus from which narratives of power emerge, a space where intimacy and authenticity unfold without pretense.

There’s undoubtedly a sense of freedom in Reyna’s scenes; a raw, unconstructed beauty discovered in the absence of a discerning audience. Yet, in witnessing these moments, from behind the shower curtain, the base of the toilet or in a steam-softened mirror reflection captured in a phone camera, the viewer becomes a passive onlooker, granted access to a world that exists beyond performance. Reyna’s work exposes the relationship between her subjects as one built on trust. Presence itself becomes the dialogue—an exchange of glances and gestures free from judgment yet deeply attuned to one another.

For many women, the bathroom is also a site of transformation. In this liminal space, layers are both applied and removed and identity fluctuates between what is hidden and what is revealed. Reyna appropriates the very methods used to construct an idealised, polished femininity by painting with makeup and using makeup wipes as a patchworked canvas. Not dissimilar from applying cosmetics to skin, her process involves layering, blending close-toned shades within the same colour family, and building textural depth to create light and shadow. In her hands, the material characteristics of cosmetics themselves become a metaphor: highly compact yet fragile, intensely pigmented yet easily erased. The wipes too, absorbing and embedding colour, serve as a reminder that what society deems ‘feminine’ is often temporary—disposable, yet deeply ingrained.

The bathroom reinforces this in-between state, acting as both a private retreat and a threshold to the public world. It is a space where identity is not only reflected but also deactivated and reconstructed, where we remove our respective masks to find ourselves, often, quite literally, naked. Grounded in this reality, the paintings comprising El baño illuminate the unspoken intimacies that shape our closest relationships, revealing the vulnerability of those we let past the threshold.