Nicole Farhi has used sculpture to shine a spotlight on people around the world who have endured miscarriages of justice and who have shaped legal history.

Nicole Farhi, CBE, the internationally feted designer and sculptor, is to show her latest exhibition J’Accuse…! at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery from 19 March – 15 June 2025.

The new exhibition displays 25 hand-sculpted ceramic busts, each depicting victims of miscarriages of justice across multiple countries around the world over the past 125 years whose wrongful convictions have shaped legal history.

The exhibition takes its name from J’Accuse…! — Émile Zola’s famous open letter that exposed the wrongful conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in France in 1898. Inspired by Dreyfus’s case, the artist has spent the past two years researching and sculpting figures from around the world who have been unjustly accused, including Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison before his conviction was overturned in 2023, leading to the resignation of Helen Pitcher, Chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

J’Accuse…! invites visitors to consider the people behind these cases. Each bust offers a portrait of an individual who endured years, even decades, of wrongful imprisonment, some faced torture, some lost their lives.

Nicole’s aim is to help society remember these individuals, because, in her words, “not forgetting is the greatest service we can do.”

A celebrated designer turned full-time sculptor, Nicole Farhi is widely known for her eponymous fashion brand but has dedicated the past two decades to her artistic practice. She trained in sculpture under Jean Gibson and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, and has exhibited at Gainsborough’s House and The Harley Gallery. Farhi, a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, has often focused on the human form, and J’Accuse…! marks a new focus — one that uses portraiture to depict the victims behind cases that have made legal and political history.

Although many are historic cases, the display includes more contemporary examples, with two of the most high profile being Andrew Malkinson whose unjust incarceration for 17 years for a rape he did not commit is still making headlines and Lucia de Berk, the paediatric nurse from the Netherlands, wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003, exonerated in April 2010 who is currently being cited in response to Lucy Letby’s case.

Listing Information

J’Accuse…! Sculptures by Nicole Farhi

Date: 19 March – 15 June 2025

Artist
Nicole Farhi

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery

Address: Ealing Green, London W5 5EQ
8-minute walk from Ealing Broadway Station (Elizabeth, Central, District Lines & National Rail)

Opening hours:
Wednesday to Sunday 10am–5pm, including Bank Holidays (First Thursday of the Month: 10am–8pm)