When Shyama Golden would discover herself disenchanted as a baby, her dad and mom would usually reply with “too bad, so sad, maybe next birth.” Invoking reincarnation and the chances of another life, this phrase continues to reinvent itself in Golden’s observe.
On view subsequent month at PM/AM, Too Dangerous, So Unhappy, Possibly Subsequent Start presents a set of lush work stuffed with surreal particulars, earthly textures, and a recurring blue-faced character. As with earlier sequence, the artist invents an unlimited, magical narrative that flows by means of every of the works, this time as a four-act efficiency.
The legendary storyline unfolds with a set of diptychs comprised of a large-scale scene and a close-up companion providing one other perspective. These pairings visualize a type of different previous for the artist as she explores the inexorable twining of non-public company and bigger forces like destiny and collective experiences that form our identities.
In Too Dangerous, So Unhappy, Possibly Subsequent Start, Golden opens along with her blue-faced alter ego named Maya, a rendition of the Sri Lankan folklore tricksters generally known as yakkas. Wearing a fur swimsuit, the character lies within the roadway, her chest cut up open to disclose a brilliant pink wound. A bag of oranges is littered close by.
The counterpart to this titular work is a self-portrait of the artist barefoot, posed towards the rocky roadside. She stands atop cracked pavement whereas oranges spill blood-red juice on the bottom. Introspective but invoking the common, the pair grasps on the pressure between surprising violence and demise, whether or not metaphoric or actual, and the flexibility to seek out resilience within the face of adversity.
Golden’s sequence continues to unravel as a sequence of contrasts. She considers fame, erasure, and the place freedom resides inside the two, together with the notion of sole inventive geniuses mistakenly thought to function outdoors the entire. And in “Mexican Texas, 1862,” the artist tackles the porous, if not arbitrarily drawn, boundaries that tie us to states and nations and in the end, change over time.
Along with her oil work for this exhibition, Golden is collaborating on an animated video mission along with her husband, the director Paul Trillo, who will construct an AI mannequin educated solely on Golden’s work. Given the hesitation by many artists concerning the position of synthetic intelligence and mental property, the pair is enthusiastic about confronting the difficulty from the angle of affect and the parable of the lone genius. Golden writes:
Many artists who’re canonized are literally working in a method that they didn’t invent however that was a part of a motion arising out of their time and placement. AI is deeply unsettling to artists within the West as a result of we romanticise the artist as a singular determine, who is barely influenced by one to 3 different clearly outlined artists, giving them a lineage of creative inheritance and perceived worth.
Golden additionally ties this concept to “the clout needed to command a price for our work,” which she suggests is just one other narrative system within the act of self-mythologizing.
When you’re in London, Too Dangerous, So Unhappy, Possibly Subsequent Start runs from Might 23 to July 1. Discover extra from Golden on her web site and Instagram.
