When Shyama Golden Would be disappointed as a child, her parents often responded with “a pity, so sad, perhaps next birth.” This sentence evokes reincarnation and the possibilities of an alternative life and continues to reinvent itself in Golden’s practice.
To be seen next month at PM/AM” Too bad, so sad, maybe next birth Presents a collection of lush paintings filled with surreal details, earthy textures and a recurring blue face. As with earlier series, the artist invents a huge, magical story that flows through each of the works, this time as a four-act version.
The mythical storyline unfolds with a collection of Diptychs consisting of a large-scale scene and a close-up companion that offers a different perspective. These combinations visualize a kind of alternative past for the artist while investigating the inexorable twining of personal freedom of choice and larger forces such as Lot and collective experiences that form our identity.
In Too bad, so sad, maybe next birthGolden opens with her blue face alter ego named Maya, a interpretation of the Sri Lankan folklore tricksters known as Yakkas. Dressed in a fur suit, the character is in the roadway, her chest split to reveal a bright red wound. A bag of oranges is strewn in the neighborhood.
The counterpart of this titular work is a self -portrait of the barefoot artist, posed against the Rocky Roadside. She stands on top of cracked paving while oranges spill blood red juice on the ground. Intrectief and yet the universal calls, grabs the couple, the couple grabs the tension between unexpected violence and death, metaphorical or real, and the ability to find resilience in the light of adversity.
The Golden series continues to unravel like a series of contrasts. She considers fame, erases and where freedom lives within the two, together with the idea of some creative geniuses that would wrongly work the whole outside the whole. And in ‘Mexican Texas, 1862’ the artist takes the porous, if not randomly drawn, boundaries that connect us to states and nations and ultimately change over time.
In addition to her oil paintings for this exhibition, Golden is working together on an animated video project with her husband, the director Paul TrilloThat will build an AI model that is only trained on the paintings of Golden. Given the hesitation by many artists about the role of artificial intelligence and intellectual property, the couple is interested in confronting the issue from the perspective of influence and the myth of the only genius. Golden writes:
Many artists who are holy actually work in a style that they have not invented, but was part of a movement that came from their time and location. AI is deeply disturbing for artists in the West because we romantize the artist as a single figure, who is only influenced by a to three other clearly defined artists, giving them a origin of artistic legacy and observed value.
Golden also connects this idea with ‘the influence needed to recommend a price for our work’, which she suggests that it is simply another narrative device in self-mythologizing.
If you are in London, Too bad, so sad, maybe next birth runs from May 23 to July 1. Find more Van Golden On Her website And Instagram.
