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Khatia Esartia MY SWEET POTATO/Chapter 7
March 30 – May 18, 2022
Opening Reception March 29, 4-8 pm
Checklist (PDF)
At the Vanguard: The Work of Khatia Esartia, by Ksenia Nouril (PDF)
Press
artnet Editor’s Picks: 14 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week by Sarah Cascone
“There is a line in a poem by Ana Boźičivić that paints an eerie similar condition I find myself in while working. “You can’t forget the war that lives on inside you even as you don’t dare share it with your new friends, for fear of seeing them recoil from the war inside you, and so you are always alone,’’ and so alone in font of a canvas, refusing to bend to the panic that comes with powerlessness, I tread lightly, unable to give myself completely over, uneasy of being boxed into a corner where the ‘other’, the victim, the refugee, resides. And so I work, providing punctuation marks in our century-long run on tragedies and absurdism in which we find ourselves in over and over again.” -KH.E.
“You don’t forget what an air raid siren sounds like, and when you hear such a siren however many years later on another continent your heart skips a beat and your mouth is filled with cotton. When everyone in the new country that surrounds you has forgotten, if they ever even knew the story, you don’t forget what running from your home feels like, leaving the room of your childhood never to see it again the way it was that day, full of your books & old toys & dreams for a future. You can’t forget the war that lives on inside you even as you don’t dare share it with your new friends, for fear of seeing them recoil from the war inside you, and so you are always alone. Living in a pocket of peace when a different kind of war is waged every day on the streets around you, watching a new generation of kids in a sister land far away flee the rooms of their childhood carrying fresh war inside them like a fruit pit, you remember & know & wonder what purpose words can serve, what silence buys, and the memory that won’t let you go grows undeterred from your stomach out your mouth toward the sunlight.” -A.B.
Featuring new paintings and works on paper, My Sweet Potato/ Chapter 7, is Khatia Esartia's third solo-show with the gallery. With dark humor and subtle references to contemporary pop and meme culture, these works accompany Fluffy - a signature character, creation of Esartia- through her quest to bring back to the dinner table a Sweet Potato which has gone missing. As more chapters are yet to come, this open-ended journey becomes an intricate exploration of the post-war and post-traumatic issues, isolation, and dislocation.
CATALOG
Khatia Esartia
MY SWEET POTATO / Chapter 7
Essay by Ksenia Nouril
Published by Marisa Newman Projects
Softcover, 7×7 in (18×18 cm), # of Pages: 20
ISBN 9798210311535
Gallery hours are Monday through Wednesday, 1 – 6 pm, and by appointment.