Among Kiparis’s previous projects are A Time to Gather Stones at The Crypt Gallery and the recent Stations of Life: The Way of the Cross at Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead. Her new work also unfolds within a sacred setting: the exhibition will take place at the Gothic St John’s Hyde Park, in the heart of London.

The Scent of Babylon continues the artist’s long-running exploration of the role of women in biblical narratives. Here, two opposing archetypes converge: the Virgin Mary and the Whore of Babylon. Through Kiparis’s paintings and Andy Go’s media-art installations, the exhibition presents thirteen portraits of women drawn from religious mythology and literary imagination, figures who embody both sanctity and transgression, vulnerability and power. Among them are Salome and Medusa, Ophelia and Lilith, the Lady of Shalott and Mariana.

From Eden to Babylon, the biblical image of woman as both creator and destroyer reveals the fragility of the world itself. At the centre of the exhibition is Legno Sacro, a fragrance created by Dor Olfactory especially for the project in collaboration with curator and olfactory art researcher Alexandra Dolgosheina. Presented as an active sensory element rather than a supplementary detail, the scent serves as a counterpoint to the visual works, deepening the exhibition’s atmosphere of tension and connecting the figures of Madonna and Harlot — absolute holiness and apocalyptic decadence.

The evening will also feature an original live performance by Anna Kiparis and Alexandra Dolgosheina, choreographed by London-based choreographer Nick Hodos. Throughout the performance, two women move through the church in opposite directions — one towards the altar and the other away from it. Exchanging roles as they proceed, they gradually dissolve the boundaries between the sacred and the secular, purity and sin, submission and will.

The exhibition will take place for one night only, on 18 June, and will be open to visitors from 7pm to 10pm at St John’s Hyde Park.

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