'Sweetener' by Charlotte Mei
Charlotte Mei transforms the 3’6 Bar at Fortnum & Mason into an intimate dreamscape with Sweetener, a collection of oil paintings that explore the layered territories of tenderness, ritual, and our relationship with the natural world.
Based in London, Mei is an internationally exhibited artist whose collaborators include Hermès, Nike, Rimowa, and The New York Times, and her work captures small, poetic moments: emotional screenshots that shimmer between the tactile and the ethereal.
Conceived during residencies in Okayama, Japan, and Chiang Mai, Thailand, these works reflect a practice rebuilt through solitude, meditation, and close observation of nature. The resulting paintings possess a fluid, textured sensitivity, marking a deliberate evolution towards softness, introspection, and sweetness.
Ranging from intimate canvases to large-scale statement pieces, the collection includes works titled Sigil, Crush, Lucid Dreams, and Avalon, and each work invites viewers into atmospheric realms and dreamlike spaces where florals, still lifes, landscapes, and enigmatic characters coexist.
Mei’s exploration of ‘sweetness’ finds perfect resonance within Fortnum’s, with the work examining sweetness and cuteness as layered concepts: from how we present ourselves to the world, to the meaningfulness and pettiness of such gestures, and the darker undertones sweetness can both reveal and conceal.
As an artist who consistently reimagines fantasy narratives through a feminine lens, Mei continues to carve out space for alternative ways of being and seeing. Sweetener invites us to pause and attend to the quieter, more vulnerable aspects of experience – the moments of rebuilding, reflection, and the mysterious sweetness that can emerge from complexity.
Staged within our iconic flagship store at Piccadilly – where traditions of taste, ritual, and indulgence have endured for three centuries – the exhibition deepens the theme of sweetness.
Occupying a central space at the heart of Fortnum's, sweetness becomes sensory pleasure, cultural performance, and a mode of self-presentation, as Mei explores how sweetness and cuteness can be at once profound and frivolous, mirroring the contradictions of intimacy and identity.
You can follow Charlotte on Instagram @charlottemei_.
