It’s Friday evening, and it feels like summer. Sundress—jacket optional. A well-dressed crowd gathers at the opening of Franco-Russian artist Apollinaria Broche’s new solo exhibition, What Colour is Your Scream, at Union Pacific Gallery. Broche herself is a bit of a fashion fiend and an Acne Studios darling. She previously collaborated with the Swedish label on ceramic sculptures and accessories for their AW21–22 collection.
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What Colour is Your Scream commences with a film of Broche in conversation with women, discussing the colours of their screams. Their answers are punctuated by demonstrations. Broche interprets these responses through 12 new sculptures, also inspired by the stray roadside wildflowers she gathered in Pietrasanta. After observing the flora in their original habitat and following their displacement, Broche transformed them into anthropomorphic portraits of persistence.
Exploring the female voice as a site of both expression and policing, Broche turns Union Pacific into a field of flowers. Collaborating with her brother, the sound artist Manus1ck, each sculpture verbally reacts to its environment and observers. Multiple works were created using the ancient Japanese pottery technique of raku, in which, instead of being slowly cooled in a kiln, red-hot ceramics are immediately placed into combustible materials after firing, resulting in textured glazes and lustrous sheens.
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Sprouting six feet tall, S. (2026) diverges into two separate blossoms. The ceramic petals are a faint butter yellow, while the stem, leaves, and thorny root-claws are composed of brass and bronze. Nestled within one of the blossoms is a metallic, baby-doll-like face with envy-inducing lashes. The face stares blankly, reminiscent of Cicely Mary Barker’s fairy illustrations.
Broche’s portfolio is punctuated by whimsical and nostalgic motifs: deflated teddy bears, sword-bearing angels, and moody lemons. What Colour is Your Scream is no exception. A Flower For You (2026) leans against the wall as a lone daisy blooms from a thigh-high fishnet stocking. The stocking is wrinkled, as if discarded on a bedroom floor, like a girlhood that has been outgrown.
On a block of crystal quartz sits a tall, narrow metal plinth upon which a one-legged flower balances. Studies of Pieta (2026) is cast in bronze, white bronze, and brass. A drooping, nondescript flower forms the upper body of a single human leg—a floral centaur of sorts. A ring with a red stone sits at the top of the leg like a garter. Only the heel of the foot remains balanced on the plinth; it appears as though the slightest movement could cause the withered flower to fall. He loves me, he loves me not.
It is one of many floral centaurs in the exhibition. R. (2026) stands nearly five and a half feet tall, an aubergine-hued flower growing from a stocking-covered leg with long, thorny limbs for toes. It is the pin-up version of the Piranha Plant from Mario Kart—something sweet that has learned how to bare its teeth.
Each time I walked through Apollinaria Broche’s What Colour is Your Scream, I spotted something new—a hidden hand, or the way a blue glaze caught the gallery light. It felt like flipping through the pages of my favourite childhood book, Fairyopolis, an interactive secret diary chronicling the summer its author discovered fairies. Each sculpture felt like a pop-up begging to be opened, a new detail waiting to be revelled in.
Apollinaria Broche What Colour is Your Scream is on from 29 May through 4 July 2026. Union Pacific Gallery at 15 West Central Street WCIA IJJ, London.
