Ilana Savdie’s first solo show with Kohn Gallery comprises 13 canvases and nine works on paper. Savdie uses vivid color, structure and composition to explore ideas of a liquid world as a metaphor to an ever-changing identity.
The title of the exhibit “Entrañadas” translates as “innards” in English. It is the interior or what is within that is the focus of this new body of work. As a queer artist, Savdie is interested in the idea of shapeshifting as a means to explore her identity. This is where the idea and concept of “fluidity” or liquid, come into play. Throughout the new series, the composition is chaotic with acidic bright neon colors and shapes that morph into body parts and figures as they intertwine with one another, establishing and collapsing shapes within each canvas.
Ilana Savdie, Falsos Positivos, 2021
In the painting Queen Breeders (2021), Savdie portrays two hooded faceless figures with other recognizable objects appearing, including the Marimonda mask—a folkloric symbol from the artist’s native Colombia—employed to mock the oppressive elite. The painting is a statement between the migratory nature of Savdie’s life and the flexibility of her identity. In Falso Positivos (2021), talons and police body armor make their appearance as part of a contemplation of the current sociopolitical condition. The liquid world of identity and gender dominate the paintings of Savdie. Not “fitting in” to a certain ideal is to become shapeless, thus the melding forms in the painting.
The opposing natures of the solid and fluid are pivotal in understanding Savdie’s work. In the mid-20th century, Surrealists such as Dali, Ernst and Tanguy used the biomorph to explore the unconscious and dreams. Savdie’s painting uses it as a means to investigate queer identity, migration and the current zeitgeist. In Ilana Savdie’s “Entrañadas” the works flows to an assertion of being real—both inside and out.
Ilana Savdie: Entrañadas
November 6 – January 29, 2022
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