Reba Maybury: Secession Wien 2026

How do you dominate Gustav Klimt? This was one of the first questions Reba Maybury posed while preparing her exhibition ‘I Come in Peace’. Maybury is an artist, writer, and political dominatrix whose multidisciplinary practice interrogates the intersections of feminism, sexuality, labour, and power. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring a set of instructions for ‘I Come in Peace’ written by the artist, as well as excerpts from psychoanalyst’s Avgi Saketopoulou’s book ‘Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia’. The artistic intervention takes the form of lip traces left by one of Maybury’s submissives: the artist made him kiss each individual copy.