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Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, is a British artist who started her journey in the mid-1970s in Manchester while studying graphic design. Her early works include a bright yellow record cover featuring a woman with an iron for a head created for The Buzzcocks, an English punk rock band and their 1977 single, Orgasm Addict. Hayward Gallery’s Linder: Danger Came Smiling charts through the course of this feminist force who, with an array of colours, photo montages and collages, comments on the realities of not being a man.
Coming off the streets of London into this deafeningly quiet, white space, the silence in the exhibition rooms is nothing but menacing. In her 1977 mixed media work, Masks I - V, she includes five mannequin heads dangling from steel rods, each wearing a mask that covers the eyes. Each mask is decorated with lace, satin or tassels, imitating intimate women’s wear, seeming almost sexual, with something sinister lurking. To see these masks more closely, the audience also has to enter a circular space cordoned off with a sheer fabric. From afar, this fabric looks seemingly like a veil - thin, falling from the ceiling and lifted just above the floor. On closer inspection however, the fabric seems akin to a net, but the realisation comes too late. At that point, the audience is already standing in the enclosed space, caught in this sexual exploitation.
Danger Came Smiling addresses the historic yet continued commodification of the female body in magazines and pop culture. In her 1976 untitled photomontage series, she uses images from pornography and fashion magazines mixed with consumer catalogues. This results in a series of images of women in lingerie and in intimate settings, but with their faces replaced by household goods such as vacuums, blenders and even a fork poking into their eyes as they embrace a man. Linder’s work comments on the stereotypical expectation for women to take care of the house, forcing them to almost become one with the objects in the house.
At the same time, by using pornographic images, Linder comments on the extreme sexualisation of the female body and its constant exploration as a consumer object. She further examines this in her 1977, twenty-four-part archival pigment prints called Pretty Girls. In this predominantly black-and-white series, the erotically posed body has the head of a household object, creating cyborg-like women. These ‘pretty girls’ question the way these magazines commodify the body, adjusting it to fit the gaze of the viewer. Linder readjusts it further to hone in on the excess objectification of women in media and magazines. In The Goddess Who Lives in the Mind, a 2020 artwork, Linder uses a lightbox to emphasise the seemingly nude image of a woman sitting on her knees on a train track with her hands in her hair. The body of this woman has been supplanted by a blooming white lily. There are many ways to understand Linder’s use of the flower. Flowers are also often used for their aesthetic appeal and ability to aid in cross-pollination and reproduction. By using the flower, Linder points at how both flowers and women are looked at as aesthetic objects, questioning this representation and the constant need for women’s bodies to fulfil aesthetic, sexual and reproductive fantasies.
Moving from magazines to film and popular culture, as well as social media, Linder explores the exploitative and consumeristic depiction of the female body across five decades. The exhibition ends with a discussion on the digital age and a brief look into ‘deepfakes’ that allow images of female celebrities and prominent figures to be misused by the general public. In a 2025 work with the iconic title Linder, The Most Sacred Monster of Photomontage in Her Time, she alludes to Salvador Dali’s similarly titled work that discusses the overt sexualisation of child stars by placing the face of a child actor on the body of a sphynx. In her work, in an attempt to look at deepfake similarly, she puts her own image on the body of a Playboy centrefold with the background of the setting sun. Through her work, Linder constantly tries to problematise what is not only becoming socially accepted but also the norm. She questions the gaze that female bodies are subjected to, subverting it through five decades worth of her work to change the narrative.
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