Guest artist HOLLY STEVENSON joins Freud Museum curator VANESSA BONI and JILLIAN KNIPE to discuss her work via 'Down Below' by Leonora Carrington. The original manuscript was "lost", so it was re-written via dictation and first published in 1944 in the surrealist journal VVV. Having fled from Nazi occupied France after her lover Max Ernst was arrested, the book describes first hand Carrington's traumatic confinement in a mental institution in Spain and her escape, eventually settling in Mexico City. It also connects directly with her 1940 painting of the same name.

We discuss hybrids, psychosis, illness, seamstresses, figurines, transference, trauma, worms, bedsheets, potency, alchemy, lucidity, fetishes, limbs, candy, autofiction, worms, visions, rebirth, Oedipus, transference, psychoanalysis, surrealism, netsuki, genius, creative coherence, brutal rape, civil war, role reversals, mythological beasts, defending insanity, hearing ghosts, colour shifts, inner transformation, wild tiger, symptomatic gut, dynamic unconscious, mythic underworld, female identity, symbolic structures, being celiac, the drive to create, Nazi occupied France, the surrealist imagination, borders of knowledge, structure of the unconscious, orange blossom poisoning, green as a magic colour, the studio and the couch, the Santander sketchbooks, and alternative ways of engaging with reality.

'Leonora Carrington: The Symptomatic Surreal' curated by Vanessa Boni at Freud Museum 25 March - 10 August 2026

HOLLY STEVENSON

holly-stevenson.co.uk

@holly_stevenson

MAC Museum of Contemporary Art Gibellina City of Culture

The Sainsbury Centre

RAMM The Royal Albert Memorial in Exeter 3 Oct 2026 - 21 Feb 2027 'Living Labrynths: Art and Fungi'

'Holly Stevenson: Tracing the Irretraceable' 14 May - 29 June 2025 including essays by Elizabeth Fullerton, Sharon Kivland and Emily Steer

'The Debate' Frieze 2023 curated by Fatos Üstek

'Another Mother' 2022 The Artist's Garden 

'Mother Art Prize' 2020

ARTISTS 

Daniel Buren

Dorothea Tanning

Leonora Carrington

Louise Bourgeois

Max Ernst

Tracey Emin

Salvador Dali

BOOKS + WRITERS + THEORISTS

Ali Smith

Professor Alyce Mahon 

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism 'Book of Symbols'

Carl Jung

Jane McAdam Freud

Leonora Carrington 'The Debutante', 'The Hearing Trumpet', 'The Oval Lady'

Marina Warner

Mikhail Bulgakov 'The Master and Margharita'

Pierre Mabille 

Prophecy Cole 'The Shadow of the Second Mother'

Sigmund Freud 'The Interpretation of Dreams' 

GALLERIES + GALLERISTS + INSTITUTIONS

The Artists' Garden created by Claire Mander at thecolab.art support via change.org 'Long Live the Artist's Garden'

Faro Santander supported by Fundación Banco Santander

Freud Museum

National Gallery Edinburgh

Peggy Guggenheim

Tate Gallery