Ilana Savdie, installation view of \u201cEctopia\u201d at White Cube Paris, 2024. Photo: Thomas Lannes. Copyright the artist and White Cube. Image courtesy of White Cube. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Savvy quickly rose to prominence after earning her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2018. She first broke through with a solo show at ltd Gallery in Los Angeles in 2019, followed by solo shows at Michael Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles and Deli Gallery in New York in 2021. Riding on this momentum, Savvy exhibited her work for the first time at White Cube Gallery in London in 2022. In July 2023, a solo exhibition, \u201cRadical Contraction,\u201d was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, indicating that the wider art world was taking notice of her work. <\/p>\n
Savidi grew up in Barranquilla, Colombia, and credits much of her early influence to the city\u2019s famous Carnival<\/em>the second largest such celebration in the world. As a child, she watched the streets come alive with colorful parades. Participants wore extravagant and often ridiculous costumes, such as the popular phallic Marimunda <\/em>The mask, an elephant and monkey figure, was meant to mock the oppressive elite. These early experiences would ultimately have a huge influence on her work, which is fully reflected in the bold, expressive use of color in her large-scale paintings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Ilana Savidi Impression of the hole<\/i>2024. \u00a9 The Artist. Photo: Lance Brewer. \u00a9 White Cube. Courtesy of White Cube.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
Her work has always been concerned with the way identity is represented and understood in culture. In addition to carnival masks, she has drawn inspiration from everything from images of wrestling figures, historical prints by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, and the choreography of war scenes in movies. These references are somewhat recognizable in her paintings, but also distorted, such as Desperate Glory Spine Detachment<\/em>reminiscent of a clash between wrestlers, or In your great old sorrow, that is my home <\/em>(all works 2024), the painting distills abstract forms into a mask-like head. For Savdie, the interest in masks relates to her own queer identity and the community\u2019s association with secrecy and performance. For centuries, queer people have been expected to be openly submissive and therefore present a homogenous identity within a supposedly heterosexual society.<\/p>\n\u201cI think a lot about the unique experience of being queer and simultaneously coded and exposed,\u201d she said. \u201cPerforming is both a masking and an act of shedding an armor\/skin\/shell that can be both protective and oppressive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Ilana Savdie, installation view of \u201cEctopia\u201d at White Cube Paris, 2024. Photo: Thomas Lannes. Copyright the artist and White Cube. Image courtesy of White Cube. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In Heterotopia, Savidi focuses on two key dichotomies. The first is the one between vulnerability and strength, which she discussed with Moran Schelleger, who wrote an essay for the exhibition titled “Ilana Savidi’s Shadow Body.” “We were talking about heroes and their emergence in the spectacle of war. What does it mean to protect, to be authentic or watered down? A lot of these works reference the protective shell of a crustacean, but also the decadent armor of a warrior,” Savidi explains. <\/p>\n
The second is the difference between chaos and order. Scattered signal of Homo erectus<\/em>chaotic elements such as swirling colors and fragmented shapes are arranged to create an underlying sense of order. This oscillation between form and frenzy represents how we see ourselves, a perception that is always changing.<\/p>\nIn addition to the large-scale paintings, Dystopia also features six pen drawings. For many years, the artist has planned his works directly on the canvas. In 2020, the artist reintroduced drawing into his creative process as a way to develop connections with ideas in his archive of images. “Drawing is a way to move away from reference images and feel the sensations first – just immerse yourself in the connection between yourself and something in your memory,” Savidi said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Portrait of Ilana Savdie. \u00a9 Ilana Savdie. Photo: Mara Corsino. Image courtesy of White Cube. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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These works on paper, such as the frenetic pen drawings Hobby Horse<\/em>always unfinished, stands out among her large paintings in the exhibition. These paintings are exhibited together in “Heterotopia” and she hopes that the audience will be able to find the connection between her small paintings and large works independently. For example, this painting Paper Plane<\/em>Marked by clashing rainbow hues of green, pink, purple and orange, it seems to resemble the Hobby Horse<\/em>. <\/p>\nWhen she actually begins painting, she begins by pouring pigment and melted beeswax onto the canvas and watching them move “slowly” across it. She then cross-references her paintings with her archive of images. “It becomes a response to the decisions I made in the sketches and the decisions made by the materials on the canvas. In that interplay, I find the final form,” she says. From there, painting is a process of balancing her various influences, references, and sketches. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Ilana Savdie, installation view of \u201cEctopia\u201d at White Cube Paris, 2024. Photo: Thomas Lannes. Copyright the artist and White Cube. Image courtesy of White Cube. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The word “ectopic” itself is a medical term used to describe an organ or body part that is in the wrong position, and it gives us a clue to how Savdie sees her work – images that would not normally go together are manipulated into unrecognisably familiar images. For example, a hand glimmers among the abstract forms Holy Smile<\/em>. <\/p>\n\u201cThe work is in that fine space between seductive and repulsive,\u201d Savidi says. \u201cSometimes that\u2019s through the subject matter, sometimes it\u2019s through the materiality and that uncanny thing that\u2019s both familiar and strange at the same time.\u201d For Savidi, this feeling of being in between is her primary motivation, a sign that she\u2019s on the right track: \u201cIt\u2019s oscillating between two things, never quite resolving anything. That feeling is what drives a lot of my work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Maxwell Raab<\/p>\n
Maxwell Rabb is a staff writer at Artsy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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