Large-scale velvet paintings by Hilary Greenstein exploring femininity, autonomy and the female figure through electric colour and textured surfaces.
Hilary Greenstein is showing Disaster Femmes at Modus Locus, a collection of large-scale velvet paintings that run through the fall. The show opened with a reception on Friday, October 9, and the gallery stays open on Saturdays and Sundays from October 9 through October 26, from 12 PM to 4 PM. There's also a closing reception on Friday, November 6, from 6 PM to 9 PM.
Greenstein paints feminine bodies that refuse to be contained or controlled. She pulls from art history, found images, and magical realism to reinterpret the female figure through electric color, textured surfaces, collage, and a bold use of the gaze. The work comes from her own experience as a queer femme, exploring the body, femininity, selfhood, and autonomy. Disaster Femmes is her own queer, chaotic-good play on the femme fatale trope: where the original figure is presented as duplicitous, her protagonists combine mysterious power and vulnerability, acting as protectors, active witnesses, and arbiters of judgment.
She's been working on velvet since 2018, drawn to the material's tension between hardness and softness, opacity and transparency, and to its history in religious iconography, pop art, and folk art. By using it here, she recontextualizes a form long dismissed as 'low art' into potent tableaus. The show was supported by a fiscal year 2026 Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
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Modus Locus is at 3500 Bloomington Ave S. in Powderhorn Park, and admission is free. You can catch the work on the weekends through October 26, or drop by for the closing reception on Friday, November 6, from 6 PM to 9 PM.
