Taking its name from The Chick’s 1999 song “Goodbye Earl,” Bambou Gili’s solo Night Gallery exhibition is a beautiful, yet ominous, exploration of the power and potential of womanhood and female friendship. The exhibition loosely follows the song—the story of Mary Anne and Wanda, high school best friends whose paths diverge following graduation, only to reunite to off Wanda’s abusive husband, the titular “Earl.”

While The Chick’s song is quick paced and upbeat, Gili’s visual interpretation is strikingly different. The show begins with a large, somber painting of two young women—Mary Anne and Wanda—dressed in pastel blue and pink dresses, holding one another beneath a banner that reads “Class of 1999.” The muted colors and hauntingly blank stares of the women are discomforting, making the painting eerily reminiscent of the aged, yellow snapshots found tucked in drawers at antique stores.

Bambou Gili, Earl’s Descent, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery.

This painting is the only one in the exhibition that casts Mary Anne and Wanda in this innocent, nearly pitiful light. In other paintings, such as Goodfellas (2022), Gili’s protagonists are expressive and active, their faces radiating power and revenge rather than passivity. At times, the figures appearing entirely different from preceding paintings, making Mary Anne and Wanda placeholders for any woman.  The scenes vary from direct references to the song to moments that capture the various obstacles women face today.

The show appears to reach a crescendo with Earl’s Descent (2022), a large painting that shows a body falling to the bottom of a richly blue lake. But it’s the smaller-scaled painting, Jam Stand (2023), that marks the climactic end to Gili’s exhibition. Gili paints the women in a soft, warm light that mirrors the serene landscape they’re cast in. Though the women appear relaxed, there’s a look in their faces that make clear they’re not going back to the innocence captured as they stood beneath that “Class of 1999” banner. Gili’s work transforms Mary Anne and Wanda into more than simply characters from a ’90s ballad, she makes them an example of women do what they need to survive: As the song goes: They sell Tennessee ham and strawberry jam / And they don’t lose any sleep at night / ‘Cause Earl had to die.