Adrien Broom. Envy and Temptation, 2015. Digital print

Envy, the most corrosive of the seven deadly sins, makes its appearance at the Hudson River Museum from June 6 to September 26, 2015.  Envy is interpreted by multimedia artist Adrien Broom in photographs and life-sized scenes from fairy tales, the stories of passion, evil and redemption that have thrilled us for centuries.

Unlike the sins of lust or gluttony, there seems little pleasure taken from envy. Evil stepmothers, plotting kings, and vainglorious queens of fairy tales are alive with desire for what others have, just as alive as the tales themselves, the stories that reflect our own experiences and desires.

One thing universal in all fairy tales is their colorful recording of the strivings and errors of others and then the moral, the right way to act that emerges from the fairy tale. Connivers for riches or for the love of someone promised to another are sure to be ruined by evil envy just as the person envied will win out, get the prince, win the princess.  Once Upon a Time is the inviting opener to the story the lays before us on the page but the fairy tale has another dimension, eerily similar to the today's Google Search, where we can see into the lives of others without being seen, not on a page, but on a screen. 

Snow White's Evil Queen, the great archetype of envy appears in two guises at the heart of the exhibitions — the White Queen and the Black Queen. She wears custom gowns, one white, one black, and appears in two separate photographs. First, wearing the white gown (standing before her mirror and still morally redeemable) and next, in black (holding a blood-red heart and consumed by envy). 

A Web of Envy ensnares the Queen, both white and black, embodied as heads locked together in a dance, the Dance of Death.  Cocooned and caught within the poisonous Web, too, are famous fairy tale symbols made real as objects: Pieces of gold and mirrors, objects that connote the age-old envious thirst for beauty, wealth, and power.  Artistic signifiers of envy are seen all through the exhibition.  In particular, an illuminated plinth showcases a hand-blown glass apple that appears in Broom's photographs.

Adrien Broom lives and works in Brooklyn and is an artist with a penchant for the bizarre and beautiful. She took a degree in computer animation from Northeastern University and studied fine art in Florence and art history in London. Broom's photographs have been featured in numerous exhibitions in Connecticut and New York City, as well as in the American Dreamers exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence in 2012. The exhibition Envy is organized by the Hudson River Museum and curated by Bartholomew Bland, the Museum's Deputy Director.