For NADA New York 2025, P.A.D. presents a two-person booth featuring textiles by Sonya Derman and photographs, copper engravings, and jewelry by Anaïs Horn. Traversing practices traditionally relegated to distinct corners of craft and fine art, these artists play with tradition and decoration as they explore cultural tropes, ritual, and the connections between past and present.

 

Anaïs Horn’s cross-genre approach to making interweaves personal narrative, myth, and historical inquiry, while exploring themes of female empowerment and transformation. Love, don’t ask, 2025, is a series of copper engravings that explores interpretations of the Bluebeard fairy tale. Drawing from Gustave Doré’s illustrations for Charles Perrault’s La Barbe bleue and Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Horn adopts Judith’s courageous gaze as she unlocks the forbidden doors of Bluebeard’s castle, framing her exploration as a fearless act of feminine autonomy. The title, borrowed ironically from Bartók’s libretto, underscores Judith’s imposed role of surrender, suppressing curiosity, and resisting the urge to see. The copper engraving technique, historically tied to the printed dissemination of fairy tales, anchors Horn’s works within a broader storytelling tradition. 

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Anaïs Horn, Love, never ask (Pina Bausch), 2025, etching on Hahnemuehle paper, 24 × 30 cm, signed and numbered edition of 10, in artist’s frame.

Anaïs Horn, Love, never ask (Kékszakállú), 2025, etching on Hahnemuehle paper, 24 × 30 cm, signed and numbered edition of 10, in artist’s frame.

Anaïs Horn, Love, never ask (Barbe-Bleue), 2025, etching on Hahnemuehle paper, 24 × 30 cm, signed and numbered edition of 10, in artist’s frame.

Anaïs Horn, Love, never ask (Gloria Swanson), 2025, etching on Hahnemuehle paper, 24 × 30 cm, signed and numbered edition of 10, in artist’s frame.

Anaïs Horn, Love, never ask (The Discovery), 2025, etching on Hahnemuehle paper, 24 × 30 cm, signed and numbered edition of 10, in artist’s frame.