Making work from her position as a dominatrix, Reba Maybury’s artworks are instruction pieces completed by her submissive men, on her order. By outsourcing the menial labor of production, Maybury’s practice points at the powers of domination and subjugation, layered into both our gendered, intimate relationships and a societal order controlled by (often male) stakeholders in late capitalism. Who does the work and who profits? For O—Overgaden, Maybury continues a painting series based on paint-by-numbers kits reproducing Edgar Degas’ infamous images of sex workers washing, while introducing an element of surveillance, watching the audience watching the watched women being sexualized even while completing the most banal of tasks.
Reba Maybury (b. 1990) is a British visual artist, writer, and political dominatrix based in Funder near Silkeborg. She graduated from Central Saint Martin in London (2013) and has exhibited at venues including LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2025); Company Gallery, New York (2024); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2021); HFKD, Holstebro (2021); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2020); LUMA Westbau, Zurich (2019); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2019); and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2019).
Photo: Reba Maybury, no hobbies, German artist, mid-40s, Berlin, 2025 (detail). 36 colors, acrylic on printed canvas, 50 × 50cm