Opening reception performances hosted by drag sensation Miss Toto and featuring queens Kenzie Coulee and O’laysia.
Devan Shimoyama: A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire
Kavi Gupta proudly presents A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire, a solo exhibition of new works by acclaimed visual artist Devan Shimoyama. The exhibition follows Shimoyama’s debut European solo museum exhibition, All the Rage, at Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany, and coincides with his ongoing monumental installation The Grove at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in Washington, DC.
Shimoyama’s visually scintillating artworks stop people in their tracks. Viewers easily enchanted by beautiful things might get lost in the shimmering artistry of Shimoyama’s expertly crafted cosmetic veils. Those whose eyes and minds travel beyond the surface subterfuge of glitter, flowers, and jewels gain precious entry into a complex world of mystery, introspection, rhapsody, and desire.
The paintings and sculptures in A Counterfeit Gift Wrapped in Fire examine cultural representations related to transformation. The result of a long period of self-reflection for Shimoyama, the work materially alludes to an internal dialog he has been wrangling with concerning the difference between superficial and true change—a discrepancy noticeable at all levels, from the societal, to individual interactions in which we perform social niceties for each other rather than admit the truth about how we are doing.
“Part of this show is about paying attention to omens and thinking about how mythology is integrated into everyday life,” Shimoyama says. “When I think of the title, I think of how it feels to give something that’s fake, but mimics a more luxurious or expensive gift. It’s also about humor though, and the danger of failing to look beyond the faux finish of what we think we perceive.”
Alisa Sikelianos-Carter: Stars Are Born In Darkness
Kavi Gupta presents Stars Are Born In Darkness, a solo exhibition of new paintings by New York-based mixed media artist Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, inaugural Foreland Fellow, 2020 NXTHVN Fellow, Sustainable Arts Foundation Grantee, and a 2022 Headlands Center for the Arts Artist in Residence.
Sikelianos-Carter envisions a parallel universe in which white supremacy has been eradicated and Black features are honored as a manifestation of the mystical. Her painting practice explores a speculative world in which Blackness is a superpower. Within this universe, ancient, supernatural guardians call upon Black people to activate the innate divine technology they possess in order to manifest their transmutation into consecrated, immortal beings whose Blackness is critical to their survival and essential to their celestial transcendency.
Stars Are Born In Darkness gives shape to the beginning of this narrative. It centers the true story of kidnapped Africans trafficked on ships to be enslaved in the Americas, who threw themselves, or were thrown, overboard during the middle passage.
Reimagining this historical moment of utter despair, Sikelianos-Carter employs optically dazzling materials such as glitter, mica, and abalone shell to postulate a moment of cosmic transformation. Instead of drowning in the ocean, the falling bodies of these terrified souls are called by gigantic, underwater deities to mobilize their inherent power of sacred adaptation transform themselves into Afronauts—beings whose hair becomes a buoyant, consecrated diving apparatus that allows them to breathe and thrive in a sanctified, underwater world.
“The reason they’re able to survive is because they’re Black,” Sikelianos-Carter says. “In reality, because of white supremacy and white delusions, Black hair and Black features are seen as a detriment. But in my story, our hair is gifted from the divine to help us survive and flourish.”
Through the illuminating pictorializations of the parallel universe in which these stories are taking shape, Sikelianos-Carter is utilizing her painting practice as a healing act—a process of using storytelling as an act of empowerment and love to uplift those people who were taken from us; of reimagining historical trauma, and highlighting the strength and resilience of Blackness.
