Artwork
Nature
#folklore
#portray
#self-portrait
#Shyama Golden
“Daydream of a Nocturne” (2023), oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches. All photographs © Shyama Golden, shared with permission
In Sri Lankan folklore, yakkas are demonic tricksters, and within the work of Shyama Golden, they’re alter egos. The Los Angeles-based artist presents a brand new physique of labor this month at Harper’s Chelsea that makes use of these mythological creatures to shatter the false binary of fine and evil.
Like earlier sequence, In My Thoughts, Out My Thoughts roots in narrative. “Daydream of a Nocturne” launches the uncanny storyline with a self-portrait of the artist seated in a cemetery subsequent to a monstrous twin, rendered in unsettling washes of blues and greens. Subsequent works glimpse the artist traversing a meadow with certainly one of her signature anthropomorphic bushes on the horizon, earlier than she seems peeking from the stomach of a masked creature in “The Double.”
Golden’s journey is psychological as she makes an attempt to greet and embrace her internal demons earlier than rising anew. Every portrait witnesses the subsequent step in her metamorphosis earlier than she slithers from a tree in her human likeness within the bizarrely lovely “Blood Orange Moon.” Set within the concrete-walled Los Angeles River, the artist echoes the symbiotic and parallel transformations of psyche and setting.
In My Thoughts, Out My Thoughts is on view by way of June 22 in New York. In the event you’re in London, you may see certainly one of Golden’s work at PM/AM by way of July 15. In any other case, discover extra of her work on her web site and Instagram.
“Paradisification” (2023), oil on linen, 30 x 36 inches
“Restricted Area” (2024), oil on wooden, 48 inches tondo
“The Double” (2024), oil on linen, 30x 36 inches
“Close to Home” (2024), oil on linen, 60 x 72 inches
“Afterbirth” (2024), oil on linen, 30 x 36 inches
“Blood Orange Moon” (2024), oil on linen, 60 x 72 inches
#folklore
#portray
#self-portrait
#Shyama Golden
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