The opening salvo of Too bad tirednessthe first exhibition from Nadine Sarriedine Gallery, is a fortune cookie message rendered in textiles by Erin M. Riley: “You never hesitate to tackle the toughest problems,” along with a selection of lucky numbers. The message serves as an apt mission statement for a gallery trying to carve out its digital and physical footprint in the downtown art scene, and for this exhibition in particular, which explores the creation and performance of selfhood in the colorful work of thirteen artists. (“13” is curiously not one of Riley’s lucky numbers.)
A number of works in the exhibition relate to technology. Damon Zucconi’s digital paintings use algorithms to interweave various disarticulated and abstracted images of government documents to create four portraits of ghostly female faces bathed in light. The works confront how human likeness was historically recognized as a facsimile, a composite of the subject’s idealized self and the painter’s sympathy or honesty, and has since simultaneously become a much stricter legal category as well as a site of agency thanks to digital tools and internet. . Alex Ito’s ‘Witness’ (2024), in which a dynamic central panel of silver nitrate chrome and oxidized iron powder shifts and changes with time and its environment, also speaks to the age of social media. This reflective core draws viewers in, while the dark panels next to it bear the imprints of neon hands that recall the way flesh might appear on a heat map, the sign of someone trying and failing to get in . While we are drawn to these reflections of ourselves, believing that they connect us, this suggests that digital images often mask rather than bridge conflicts and divisions in the real world.
Other works emphasize identity and performance. “Ricochet” (2024) by Jesus Hilario-Reyes combines his dual identity as artist and DJ. The lightbox installation, draped in black electrical cables, houses hundreds of miniature black ones Jab Jab figures from the Latin American carnival tradition. These figures face a stage where strobe lights pulse in sync with a 15-minute soundtrack, translating Hilario-Reyes’ perspective from behind the DJ booth, where individual dancers gradually fade into one pulsating mass of energy.
Laura Anderson Barbata’s ‘King Olokun, (Intervention: Ocean Blues)’ (2018), meanwhile, translates the power of a sea god into what is reminiscent of a drag performance costume. The ensemble, named after the Yoruba ruler of the sea, shimmers like bioluminescent ocean life: a crown of blue leaves rises to the sky like seaweed, topped by a fringed blue lampshade-like headpiece, while a blue satin cape glitters with iridescent circles and claws. -shaped sequins and balloon cord edge. Just as bioluminescence illuminates the hidden depths of the ocean, the costume highlights the growing crisis of climate change, just as a drag performance might satirize social issues.
Relatedly, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter’s ‘A Protective Style (A Spell Cast on The Ocean floor)’ (2023) rests on the entrance floor and presents a circle of braided hair that appears to float in deep ocean waters or in a swirling night sky. Using a complex mix of materials – acrylic, paper, gouache, glitter, black tourmaline, obsidian, crochet box braids, LED lighting and vinyl cutouts – the piece draws parallels between the protective role of hair and a spiritual shield, which is both ornamental and armor suggests.
Shame on tiredness brings together artists whose works speak from the edges of society and find unexpected connections in their diverse perspectives. From Ito’s moving mirrors to Hilario-Reyes’ pulsating crowds, from Anderson Barbata’s oceanic grind to Sikelianos-Carter’s protective hair spells, each piece interweaves themes of identity, protection and transformation – suggesting that power often moves from the margins of society to the center flows.
Shame on tiredness continues at Salma Sarriedine Gallery (116 Elizabeth Street Floor 3, Lower East Side, Manhattan), until February 22. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
