On the occasion of Artissima 2025, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents Portrait, the first solo exhibition in an Italian institution by the artist Angharad William, winner of the illy Present Future 2024 Prize, the twenty-fifth edition of the initiative promoted by illycaffè and Artissima.

Through the use of multiple expressive means, Williams' projects are based on careful research and are strongly influenced by the context in which they are realized, inviting reflection on the forces that structure our lives and environments. For this occasion, the artist presents a new painting that explores the themes of representation and the history of noble portraiture. Portrait expands the artist's investigation into exhibition-making, collaboration, and the mechanisms of painting method and style, particularly engaging with the iconography and legacy of the German painter Gerhard Richter.

The exhibition revolves around a single image: Lady Diana seated with her back to the viewer, wearing the iconic red sweater decorated with white and black sheep. The composition recalls Betty (1988), the famous portrait of Richter's daughter, and, as in that case, Diana also avoids direct eye contact with the observer, resisting the frontal and iconic overexposure she has been associated with for decades.

The creation of the painting is the result of a long, philological, and creative process: the analysis of Betty's painterly rendition, the definition of light, the study of the pose, and the reconstruction of the back of Diana's head, a perspective almost absent in collective visual memory dominated by the representation of her face. Through these steps, Williams questions the relationship between public image and the construction of visual power, transforming a global icon into an opaque, unavailable image.

Balancing between image and picture, vision and matter, Portrait reflects on painting as an act of memory, capable of restoring complexity to what media images simplify. The painting practice thus becomes a way to question social and cultural hierarchies and to reflect on the devices that shape the representation of bodies and power.