MARIANNA SIMNETT : HEADLESS

In her new painting series, multidisciplinary artist Marianna Simnett takes us into a labyrinth of fragmented realities and uncanny encounters. 

Using video, artificial intelligence, sculpture, painting, and music, Marianna Simnett creates immersive installations that simultaneously seduce and unsettle. This volume foregrounds her new painting series Headless, in which Simnett makes direct reference to Max Ernst’s collage novel La Femme 100 têtes (The Hundred Headless Woman). In this dreamlike, at times nightmarish installation, she interweaves questions about gender and social hierarchies, metamorphosis, vulnerability, control, and pain. Touching on ancient mythology, she connects past and present within her multidisciplinary practice and creates her own alter egos. Simnett’s close connection to the ideas of Surrealism is highlighted as a central theme in this monograph. 

Madeleine Frey is an art historian and economist. Since 2022, she has been director of the Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR. 

Sarah Louisa Henn is an art historian and has been head of collections and curator at the Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR since March 2025.