Galerie Gomis is thrilled to announce its third exhibition in residence at Sheriff Gallery: Girls! Girls! Girls!—a bold, exuberant celebration of womanhood, memory, and aesthetic power.
Girls! Girls! Girls! is more than an exhibition—it’s a movement. Curated by Marie Gomis-Trezise, founder of Galerie Gomis, the show brings together an intergenerational group of artists from across the African diaspora, alongside Latina women, to explore how visual and sonic languages shaped by R&B culture have become tools for self-definition, collective memory, and resistance.
Presented as part of Échos à Paris Noir—a program curated by the Centre Pompidou to highlight exhibitions and events resonating with their major show Paris Noir—Girls! Girls! Girls! turns the legacy of R&B into a living, contemporary archive of image, sound, and unapologetic visibility.
A Celebration of Reclamation, Identity & Style
The featured artists draw from personal histories and media culture to reflect on how women of color have engaged with, subverted, and reclaimed public tropes of femininity. While grounded in the shared aesthetics of R&B, the exhibition amplifies a broader spectrum of diasporic narratives—intimate, political, and unapologetically expressive.
Girls! Girls! Girls! celebrates bold self-expression and challenges the pressure to conform. Aesthetics once dismissed as “too much” are recast as symbols of autonomy, joy, and radical self-love.
Marie Gomis-Trezise (curator of the show and founder of Galerie Gomis) says‘The exhibition title Girls, Girls, Girls was inspired by two iconic tracks—Jay-Z’s and Mötley Crüe’s—both of which center the male gaze, reducing women’s bodies to objects of desire. But I wanted to take that title back, to create a space of joy, power, playfulness, and sexiness, seen through the eyes of women of color—women who are often asked to tone down when they should be free to fully express their power and authenticity. Noelia Portela, who penned the exhibition text, perfectly captured the energy of the artists and the essence of the show, grounding it in the cultural force of R&B and its impact on this generation of women. Her words, the artists’ voices, and my vision all came together to shape this beautiful and powerful collective vibe. I’m thrilled to share this exhibition with you at Sheriff Gallery, as it’s a celebration of our culture, our voices, and our unapologetic presence.’
Excerpt from the Curatorial Text by Noelia Portela
(Independent curator, educator, and cultural administrator based in Paris)
GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS critically examines how three generations of women—those currently in their 20s, 30s, and 40s—have engaged with, reappropriated, and reimagined the cultural aesthetics shaped by the R&B boom. Focusing on both Black and Latina women, the exhibition foregrounds how music and fashion have served as powerful yet ambivalent tools in negotiating identity, self-representation, and visibility.
Rooted in the sonic and visual culture that defined their adolescence, the works consider how R&B's influence extended beyond its African American origins to resonate across diasporic communities. For many Latina women, this engagement entails navigating overlapping dynamics of race, gender, and cultural identity—embracing shared visual and performative codes while confronting the erasures and appropriations often embedded in dominant representations.
In the words of Gloria Anzaldúa, “I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it.” This generative act of storytelling—through image, sound, photography, painting, textile and memory—sits at the heart of the exhibition.
