Best Femmes Forever review: Marie Antoinette gets a voice

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, Best Femmes Forever, 2024; the pair’s exhibition of the same name is at Pilar Corrias, London, until 7 March 2026

(Image credit: Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley, Best Femmes Forever, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London)

Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley have been working together since 2008. Through image, film, text and performance they make humorous, sharp satires, with observations predominantly taken from fiction and characters realised in an instantly recognisable way. In their current exhibition at Mayfair’s Pilar Corrias Gallery, however, they are tackling the enduring real-life icon that is Marie Antoinette, and the female members of her court who also died during the French Revolution.

‘Best Femmes Forever’ gives a voice to Marie Antoinette, her best friend the Princesse de Lamballe, and King Louis XV’s mistress – Marie Antoinette’s rival at the court of Versailles – Madame du Barry, all of whom were killed in extremely brutal ways during the revolution.

‘I think Marie Antoinette’s notoriety really killed her,' says Mary. 'She was so popular and beautiful when she was young, and she was so influential with fashion. People were so thrilled whenever they saw her. I think all that came crashing down on her – everyone who formerly loved and knew her was ready to turn on her.'

Mary and Patrick’s work is distinctive. The pair’s monochromatic, graphic style incorporates a cartoonish or burlesque aesthetic that complements the satirical, scripted verse written by Mary, giving a voice to the characters they portray.

Over a four-channel video installation, the women’s points of view are conveyed through the prism of their constrained, short lives. The Palace of Versailles was a gilded cage for the French aristocracy at that time, who were summoned by the court to live communally. They participated at court in an atmosphere of competition, intrigue and claustrophobia, unable to leave.

‘We tried to bring in the profane aspect in [the] obsession with fashion,’ says Mary of the video installation. ‘The opening sequence between Marie Antoinette and du Barry is very sexually bawdy, but a lot of the text is in the form of a prayer. We were trying to bring together the bawdiest and yet the most tragic elements of this [story].’

The exhibition is installed with an altarpiece in mind and the work is ‘emceed’ by Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris. Carrying his head under one arm is Saint Denis, who was beheaded at Montmartre (martyr hill) and, legend has it, carried his own head to the Parisian district now known as St Denis. The saint represents martyrdom as a tribute to the three women, and this film is sympathetic to them. The artists believe that none of them needed to have died as they did. The work is also a darkly humorous nod to the use of the guillotine.

Satire falls in and out of fashion. Used throughout history, specifically in the period of the French Revolution in the form of pamphlets, it has long been used to hold power to account.

'We've always felt that satire was a way of gaining proximity to a subject, and it is such an old genre,' Mary says. 'It's so foundational to human modes of expression. Often, we're looking at a straight history and then a totally contemporary satirical type of history as well.'

The artists' work gives voices to voiceless people and voiceless things, speaking to women and the role of women in history and in literature. In satirising archetypes, they call attention to how historical ideas have pervaded to the present day.

'I think we made our first piece in 2008 together, and we have really never strayed from the basic dynamic of I write something, and Pat comes in and films it,' Mary says. 'I pick the subjects by gut instinct, and lots of times I am informed by the previous project. In the case of Marie Antoinette, I literally fell down a Wikipedia hole and then I couldn't stop thinking about it. I also have my eternal inspirations, and these are people like [Algernon Charles] Swinburne and [Edgar Allan] Poe, and some of the First World War poets.'

Adds Patrick, 'I think it's important in the early stages for Mary to be in her own world of the writing and not have any kind of concern about it being seen from the outside until she's ready. That's always an exciting moment, because then I'm usually flooded with imagery, reading it and thinking what [the work] could look like.'

There is a vaudevillian note to their work, which is always filmed in the same style, drawing the viewer out of the time of the project and into Mary and Patrick’s world. Best Femmes Forever is one of only two works by the duo that are based on real historical figures, the other being a commission by the National Portrait Gallery of a double video portrait of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and the infamous Lady Emma Hamilton. According to the artists, this may or may not be the start of a trend.

'I think there's a lot of different reasons to continue doing historical figures, it's not just about revisiting some heated controversy,' says Patrick.

'It's really a minefield,' adds Mary. 'I would feel very reluctant to pick a subject that's much more recent in time than the 18th century, because it's one thing to tweak portrayals of Nelson or Marie Antoinette, and it's another to go for figures that are much closer [to us] in time. I don't really care about getting the rise out of people in that way.'

‘Best Femmes Forever’ is at Pilar Corrias, London, until 7 March 2026, pilarcorrias.com

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Amah-Rose Abrams is a British writer, editor and broadcaster covering arts and culture based in London. In her decade plus career she has covered and broken arts stories all over the world and has interviewed artists including Marina Abramovic, Nan Goldin, Ai Weiwei, Lubaina Himid and Herzog & de Meuron. She has also worked in content strategy and production.