The pastel portraits in The Conspirators by the English artist Dawn Mellor are based on seven monologues of seven women of different ages and origins. With biting black humour, Sibylle Berg describes women who degrade and destroy themselves. They are all called “Judith,” heavily exaggerated characters referencing the biblical motif of the seductive Judith who seduced and finally beheaded Holofernes. Mellor's pictures, all created in 2010 for this book, deal with the delusional obsessions and projections of a stalker, a former lover or a family member. The artist slips into the role of the perverse fan, creating new narratives and iconographies for her “objets du désir.”