We spoke with Elisa De Wyngaert, curator of the exhibition at MoMu about girlhood, a theme that aligns with the Global open call Women by Women launched this year by PhotoVogue.
In the past couple of years, interest in girlhood has been growing across media, art, fashion, and visual culture. With GIRLS: On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between, the Museum of Fashion Antwerp seeks to raise questions around the definition of girlhood and the layered system of symbols and meanings associated with it. Opening on September 27th, the exhibition features a broad collection of works by various artists (from Louise Bourgeois, to Chopova Lowena, to Meret Oppenheim, Harley Weir, Tina Barney, and many more) investigating the world of girls, challenging the rigid conception that Western art has long imposed on them.
We spoke with curator Elisa De Wyngaert about celebrating the richness and complexity of girlhood—a political statement in a time when many teenagers are seeing their rights stripped away. It is essential to broaden and expand our understanding of girlhood, too often portrayed as fleeting, when in reality it reveals itself as a structuring axis in women’s lives. De Wyngaert aimed to encompass the different, even divergent, representations of girlhood—not to find definitive answers, but to continue questioning how girlhood can be represented and how it shapes our world.
Her approach resonates with feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s concept of a new positionality: the subject does not stand alone in a vertical position but inclines toward the other, recognising its uniqueness only through relation with alterity—bending, and being open to change, and to be changed by relationality. De Wyngaert chose to center LGBTQIA+ youth and collaborated with today’s teenagers. Her curatorial vision moves away from a compartmentalised view of the girl, embracing a fluid approach where different media and fields interact, and where the questions raised remain open.
As the title suggests, GIRLS: On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between is an exploration of liminal spaces—both conceptual and physical—where girls have been placed and represented. It reflects on the freedom that can be found in marginality and the right to self-determination, especially when you are young, rebellious, and in-between definitions, opinions, and stages of life.
You mentioned sometimes worrying that people might ask, “Why not an exhibition about boys?” — yet you felt that creating a space for girls was fundamental. How did the idea of focusing on girlhood first emerge?
After curating ECHO. Wrapped in Memory (MoMu, 2023), I kept returning to the stories and memories of teenagers - especially teenage girls - and how these continue to live on in the work of artists and designers. It felt as though there was another exhibition hidden within that research and GIRLS was born.
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You’ve said that girlhood is about ambiguity. What do you think girlhood can teach us about the importance of ambiguity in today’s world?
Today, girlhood emerges as an ambiguous language: it can be delicate, subversive, volatile, unresolved. I think that kind of ambiguity is crucial in an increasingly polarised world, because it allows space for complexity and nuance instead of fixed definitions.
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Should we perhaps speak of girlhoods in the plural, rather than a single, universal girlhood?
To me, girlhood — like childhood or adulthood — is always plural. There may be certain shared threads, such as the search for belonging or coming-of-age, but each experience is deeply personal and shaped by context.
The title In Between evokes fluidity and transition, which naturally brings to mind queerness. Could you tell us more about your decision to include LGBTQ+ youth in the exhibition?
In Between refers to being between child and adulthood, but is definitely connected to gender identity too. In the early 20th century, children’s fashion became sharply gendered: boys moved into shorts and trousers by age six, while girls’ clothing remained decorative and restrictive, anticipating their future domestic roles. These binaries have proved remarkably enduring in fashion and culture. Yet, as Judith Butler argued in Gender Trouble (1990), gender expression is not fixed but continually shaped by culture and experience. Trans and non-binary perspectives expand our view of girlhood, showing it as a fluid, evolving space of identity rather than a predetermined role on is assigned at birth.
On Boredom is a striking phrase in the title. In a society obsessed with productivity — and at a time when young people are rarely bored, overwhelmed instead with activities and stimuli — why did you choose to foreground boredom in this way?
Boredom has become a rare luxury, even though it can be a very meaningful activity.
As Lauren Greenfield notes in our catalogue: “My dad used to tell me that boredom is the highest state. I didn’t get it as a kid, but now I appreciate his brilliance.” Boredom fuels creativity; that state of drifting or daydreaming is so central to teenage years, and it’s a recurring trope in cinema too, from The Virgin Suicides to countless other coming-of-age films. Boredom, in that sense, is charged with a desire for transformation: a waiting for the world, and for one’s own coming-of-age.
Child psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssens (who we have collaborated with in the show) explains boredom in adolescence beautifully: ‘While puberty can feel like life is standing still, the teenage brain is in fact reshaping itself, pruning old connections and forming new ones. Beneath the surface, childhood is unravelling, leaving loose threads searching for adulthood.’
Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Do you think it is also possible to become a girl — and to understand girlhood not merely as an intermediate stage on the way to womanhood?
There’s a difference between expressing one’s gender identity and participating in girlhood as a broader cultural condition. In fashion, for instance, designers like Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard, Chopova Lowena, and Jenny Fax have crafted personal visions of girlhood and early womanhood. Their work disrupts traditional femininity and reimagines the “girl’s gaze” as something accessible across ages and genders.
As Susan Sontag pointed out in On Women, our society often demands that women look like girls forever, while expecting them to act like women — whereas “boys will be boys” indefinitely. How does the exhibition engage with this tension?
Morna Laing writes about this very interestingly in our publication. But, in the exhibition doesn’t focus on a boys-versus-girls opposition. Instead, it explores how fashion and art have long drawn on girlhood archetypes — Mary Janes, bows, miniskirts, school uniforms, glitter, Peter Pan collars. These motifs carry layered meanings, shifting from innocence to rebellion. What feels significant today is that artists and designers are reclaiming these codes, challenging traditional ideas of girlhood and opening them up to more inclusive expressions of age and identity.
The exhibition features works by multiple photographers. Could you tell us more about how you selected them and what guided your choices?
I wanted to include photographers from different generations who have shaped how girlhood is portrayed. Figures like Lauren Greenfield, Nigel Shafran, Roni Horn, Micaiah Carter, Nancy Honey, Leticia Valverdes, Eimear Lynch, and Petra Collins have brought nuanced visions of girlhood into books, exhibitions, and digital culture. Their work never treats girls as objects but instead approaches them with respect, often co-created or shaped by the teenagers personal boundaries and agency.
In Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, the boys say: “The girls were really women in disguise.” Subverting this idea, do you think women should have the right to be girls?
In that beautiful quote, the boys reminisce how the girls were more mature than they were, with a deeper understanding of life and even death. The exhibition explores how the concept of “the girl” has elastic boundaries. We ask different questions, through the artworks and in a final video installation too: When do you become a girl, and when do you stop being one? Is it decided by you, or imposed by others? Is girlhood just a phase, or also a mindset, a feeling, even an aura you carry?
The exhibition doesn’t offer one answer, but rather invites reflection on which emotions, memories, and impulses from girlhood continue to shape us later in life. What you choose to carry with you should remain a personal decision.
A recurring theme in the exhibition is visibility: how girls want to be seen, the consent involved in showing themselves, their bodies, and their images. In your view, what should the media do better in this regard, and how does your work position itself within this discourse?
The “young girl” in art history was often anonymous — a silent subject, a daughter of. She plays the piano, holds a kitten, clasps her hands politely on her knees; her pose and props signalling virtue and innocence. She’s not asserting herself, she’s simply there. The same idea was often continued in fashion photography. Art that truly centres girlhood, meanwhile, had too often been dismissed as sentimental or lacking intellectual rigor. That trivialisation overlooks the emotional, psychological, and political depth the topic holds.
With GIRLS, I wanted to position girlhood not just as a theme, but as a way of seeing. For many women artists and designers, adolescence has always been central to their work, and as we grow older it’s impossible not to keep one foot in those years. Much of the work in the exhibition wants to articulate precisely this: that girlhood isn’t something we leave behind, but a perspective that continues to shape how we look at the world. That’s why those years are so precious.
Curator: Elisa De Wyngaert
Guest curator film: Claire Marie Healy
Exhibition design: Janina Pedan
Graphic design: Paul Boudens
