Boudoir Babylon at NGV Triennial 2020

Boudoir Babylon celebrates queer aesthetics through a series of painted plywood volumes in NGV's Gallery Kitchen, which create different spaces for gathering and socialising.

Designed by Sibling Architecture in collaboration with Adam Nathaniel Furman, transforms NGV’s Gallery Kitchen for the NGV Triennial 2020 by drawing inspiration from three spatial typologies - the boudoir, the salon and the club - to challenge and rethink norms of how people come together and socialise.

Working together entirely via Zoom, Furman and Sibling Architecture incorporated references to each of these spaces within their final design.

Painted screens with playful cutouts – envisioned before the time of social distancing – separate people into small, individual boudoirs while big, round tables around the central feature offer larger groups a space to converge and converse as they would in a salon.

The central carousel, meanwhile, is reminiscent of the raised catwalks and DJ booths often found in nightclubs.

Boudoir Babylon is one of 30 new works that were commissioned especially for the NGV Triennial.

Photography is by Sean Fennessy.

Boudoir Babylon is on view at NGV International in Melbourne from 19 December 2020 to 18 April 2021.