Monique Négligée
Dates: 14-21 February
Public opening weekend: Valentine’s Day, Saturday 14 – Sunday 15 February
Admission: Free (some workshops are ticketed via Eventbrite)
SET 91 presents Monique Négligée, an immersive residency and durational bedroom installation by French designer and artist Monique Fei, opening across Valentine’s Day weekend, just ahead of London Fashion Week.
Transforming the gallery into a lived-in bedroom, Fei unveils a new wardrobe of sleepwear and lingerie, alongside selected archival pieces. Across the week, the space is activated through live performance, workshops, film nights, boutique encounters, and live documentation, inviting visitors to move between exhibition, ritual, and intimate participation.
Working at the intersection of craft, couture, fashion, and performance, Monique Fei merges crochet, knitwear, and latex into meticulously handcrafted wearable sculptures that challenge conventions of form, material, and identity. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Fei has staged performance-based runway presentations during Paris Fashion Week and has collaborated with artists and performers including FKA twigs, Chappell Roan, Arca, Caroline Polachek, Jennie, Oklou and Lily McMenamy.
Monique Négligée is SET 91’s sixth and final show within its first six-month curated programme.
About the exhibition
Monique Négligée unfolds within the bedroom: a space at once ordinary and charged, intimate and political. It is where bodies rest, desire circulates, identities are rehearsed, and contradictions coexist. The bedroom becomes a site of privacy and exposure, of care and neglect, of fantasy and routine. Culturally tied to femininity and domesticity, it is a place where freedom is negotiated behind closed doors, yet always shaped by social expectations.
Taking the form of an immersive residence, Monique Négligée invites performers and sound artists to inhabit the bedroom as both stage and shelter. Observed from the street through the gallery’s window, private gestures are transformed into public spectacle, exposing the bedroom as society’s fantasy space: a place where the inner life, once revealed, becomes something to be consumed. On Saturday, a bed-facing camera extends this condition into a 24-hour livestream, collapsing distance between inside and outside. What is usually contained becomes visible. The viewer is implicated in looking.
The title Monique Négligée plays on the dual meanings of négligée: the sheer garment associated with intimacy and seduction, and the French sense of carelessness or neglect. Like the bedroom itself, the work oscillates between softness and abandonment, erotic display and domestic fatigue. The installation blurs art and fashion, performance and dwelling, turning the bedroom into a cinematic site where life is staged, worn, listened to, and lived.
At the heart of the room sits a latex vacuum bed, functioning as both object and ritual. Bodies are sealed, compressed, reshaped, and documented, evoking containment as much as protection, suffocation as much as care. The vacuum echoes domestic labour: cleaning, maintenance, the invisible work that sustains intimacy. It becomes a sculptural metaphor for how bodies are shaped by the spaces designed to hold them.
Across a durational programme of performances, sleep rituals, and gatherings, the bedroom expands into multiple forms: boutique, cinema, classroom, photobooth, refuge. Visitors are invited not only to watch, but to cross the threshold: to enter the bedroom, to touch, to try on, to ask, to linger.
In this crossing, Monique Négligée proposes intimacy not as secrecy, but as a shared condition: fragile, porous, and insistently alive.
Documentation and livestream
The installation is accompanied by live documentation, including video and image-making throughout the programme.
- Video 24 Livestream (Bed POV) – active on Saturday 14 February only
- Vacuum Photobooth – producing images for a sleepwear lookbook archive
Please note: Consent and safety protocols are in place, with clear signage and opt-in participation for workshops and experiences.
Programme schedule
Beginning on Valentine’s Day weekend, Monique Négligée unfolds through a week-long programme of performances, workshops, gatherings, and intimate encounters inside the bedroom.
While all events in the programme are free to attend and open to everyone, some workshops and weekday events are ticketed, with booking links available via Eventbrite through the listings below.
Capacity is limited, so advance booking is recommended.
Opening Weekend Programme (Saturday 14 – Sunday 15 February)
‘Let’s go back to mine‘
Date: Saturday 14 February
Times: 6pm-3am | 30-minute performances every 1hr30.
Monique opens her bedroom to visiting sound artists and performers. Watched from the street through a window and inside the gallery, private gestures slip into public spectacle, exposing the bedroom as society’s fantasy space.
‘Afternoon delight‘
Date: Sunday 15 February
Times: 2-5pm
Designer Resident, K.i.s.s.principle, presents their first collection of printed homewear. On display and available to purchase in the space.
‘Bed Time Story’
Date: Sunday 15 February
Times: 7-10pm
Evening readings curated by Soho Reading Series, performed from within the bedroom.
The K.i.s.s.principle collection remains available throughout.
Weekday Programme (Monday 16 – Saturday 21 February)
Across the week, the bedroom becomes an intimate, open space to encounter the work up close. Visitors are invited to ask questions, try pieces on, play, and spend time inside Monique Négligée.
Monique School – “No Such Thing as a Stupid Question”
Dates: Monday 16 & Tuesday 17 February
Times: 11am-3pm
Curious about latex but don’t know where to start? This open, judgment-free session breaks it all down. Learn what latex really is, explore the different types, and discover how to care for it so it lasts and shines. Whether you’re a total beginner or already obsessed, this is a safe space to ask, touch, learn, and fall in love with latex.
Monique Tailoring – “Bespoke Dreams”
Dates: Wednesday 18 & Thursday 19 February
Times: 11am-7.30pm
Step into a world of made-to-measure fantasy. This is an exclusive opportunity to request fittings from Monique’s archive and ready-to-wear pieces. Measurements can be taken on site, and private appointments are available to discuss custom designs, crafted around your body, your vision, and your dream piece.
Monique Vacuum – “Enter the Bed”
Dates: Wednesday 18 & Thursday 19 February
Times: 11am-7.30pm
This is not your average photo moment. Try pieces from the sleepwear wardrobe, step into the vacuum bed, and become part of the visual story. The vacuum bed transforms into a live photobooth, introducing you to the sensation of wearing our pieces while capturing an unforgettable, other-worldly image for the mini collection lookbook.
Movie & Crochet Night
Date: Monday 16 & Tuesday 17 February
Times: 7.30-10.30pm
Ages: 18+
A selection of Monique’s favourite films loosely connected to the bedroom. Bring your forever-unfinished project: the jumper from 2016, the one started in lockdown, or the one you keep avoiding. Bring your own crochet (limited amount of yarn available to participants). No teaching, no pressure, just sharing techniques, time, and tea. All craft nerds welcome.
Monique Boutique – “Pleasure of the Unexpected”
Dates and times:
Monday 16 February – Tuesday 17 February, 3-6pm (2 slots of 15 each day)
Friday 20 February – 11am-5pm (free access)
Saturday 21 February – 11-6pm (free access)
Step inside a playful retail universe where shopping becomes an experience. Discover a curated selection of Monique pieces, accessories, and limited edition treasures—presented in a way that invites curiosity, touch, and surprise. This isn’t traditional shopping; it’s a sensory playground where each item reveals itself slowly, encouraging you to explore, experiment, and take home a piece of the Monique world.
Closing Night – “Pyjama Party”
Date: Friday 20 February
Times: 7-11pm (Doors from 6.30pm)
A final gathering in the bedroom, bringing together performance, reading and music.
The vacuum bed will return.
Maybe a pillow fight too.
7.30pm – Ozziline Mercedes, performative reading
8pm – TTBM, DJ set
9pm – Gabrielle Levie, performance
9.30pm – ‘OPIA’, DJ set
About Monique Fei
Monique Fei is a London-based French designer working at the intersection of craft, couture, fashion and performance. Her practice redefines materials traditionally linked to sensuality and fetishism, particularly latex, through fine art techniques, experimental costuming and sculptural construction.
By combining latex with knitwear, Monique Fei manipulates opacity and silhouette to explore themes of body perfection and sexual identity. Her approach celebrates altered forms, subverting notions of conformity and sensuality into bold self-representation,
Monique Fei’s work has been featured internationally at galleries such as ICA (London), Bourse de Commerce (Paris) and Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), and has staged performance-based runway shows during Paris Fashion Week in 2023 and 2024. She also collaborated with prominent artists and performers including FKA Twigs, Chappell Roan, Jennie, Arca, Lily McMenamy, Oklou and Caroline Polachek.
Monique Fei is, in her own words, a “kind of glamorous spinster” with a knit fetish, crafting worlds where yarn and rubber meet in playful, transgressive intimacy.
About the wardrobe
Unveiled as part of the installation, this new wardrobe of sleepwear, lingerie, and archival pieces extends the bedroom as a site of intimacy, exposure, and control. Combining crochet, knitwear, and latex, her meticulously handcrafted garments appear playful and soft, yet subtly sculpt and contain, making visible the constant negotiation between comfort and constraint, care and discipline. Crafted slowly by hand, the wardrobe foregrounds time, touch, and labour, asking how clothing mediates between skin and space.
Contributors
Collaborating performers, musicians, and writers including:
Soho Reading Series, NonChalante x Partners, Chisom, Chris Owen, Maurie Andresen, Xiaoqiao, Julie Demont, Celeste, and Katie Shannon.
More to be announced.
Programme
Monique Négligée marks the sixth and final exhibition in SET 91’s first six-month programme of curated shows. This programme is led by the SET curatorial team, SET studio members, and invited guest curators, and encompasses exhibitions, performance, moving-image research, and cross-disciplinary projects.
Announcements of SET 91’s next six-month programme will be announced soon.
Follow @set91set on Instagram and join our mailing list for updates.
Sign upAbout the space
SET 91 is SET’s first in-house curated contemporary arts gallery, located in Old Street. Dedicated to supporting early-career contemporary artists, the gallery provides a non-profit platform for experimentation, collaboration, and the presentation of new work beyond commercial pressures.
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