Isamaya Ffrench Expands Into Interdisciplinary Space With Studio Iron

Isamaya Ffrench introduces Studio Iron to Saatchi Yates, the inaugural exhibition of her newly launched design gallery and a decisive step in her transition from makeup artist to interdisciplinary force. Running from April 30 to June 7, the show collapses the boundaries between art, design and object. Long known for using the face as a sculptural surface, Ffrench now extends that same philosophy into space, assembling a body of work that moves between installation, sculpture, furniture and painting. Steel and iron dominate the exhibition, shaping a stark post industrial landscape.

This material language is carried through a roster of artists who each interrogate the instability of form and meaning. Jannis Kounellis presents a weighty steel wall work rooted in Arte Povera traditions, while Paul McCarthy distorts pop iconography through a reflective inflatable sculpture. Jordan Wolfsoncontributes a chair layered with bumper stickers, collapsing surface and message into visual noise and Anne Imhof’s benches, each draped with a football, evoke the uneasy stillness of transitional spaces. Marina Abramović introduces a film installation of levitation within a domestic setting, offsetting the exhibition’s industrial severity with something quietly surreal. Nico Vascellari pushes the body into extremity with a work documenting his suspension above the clouds, while additional contributions from Hannah Levy, Kelly Wearstler, Miriam Cahn, Marlene Dumas and Anselm Kiefer extend the exhibition’s psychological terrain.

What binds these works together is mood. Studio Iron constructs a world defined by unease, alienation and the residue of industrial life. Furniture becomes sculpture, sculpture becomes architecture, and utility is constantly undermined. This destabilisation reflects Ffrench’s own practice, which has always resisted fixed categorisation. Her move from makeup into spatial and object based work feels is an expansion, translating her interest in transformation, identity and surface into new physical dimensions. The exhibition becomes a natural continuation of her approach, shifting from the intimacy of the body to the scale of environment.

This moment also aligns with her recent collaboration with Nike, further underlining her growing presence beyond traditional beauty. Across both projects, Ffrench demonstrates a consistent drive to reframe familiar systems, whether that is the face, the body or the object itself. Studio Iron is making a comentary on how disciplines intersect. In doing so, she offers a vision of contemporary creativity that is fluid, confrontational and unbound by the hierarchies that once defined it.