_Two Angels Sew My Body Back Together_, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 40" x 30". Courtesy of half gallery & the artist.
Half Gallery LA will be showing brand new works by Seattle-based artist, [Eden Seifu](https://cargocollective.com/edenseifu/work) in their new show, _The Puzzle Of Dust Times Dust Equaling Fire,_ opening today, February 10. Following her debut show at Deli Gallery in Brooklyn in 2020, Eden received attention from the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/arts/design/5-art-accounts-to-follow-on-instagram-now.html) for her psychedelic, figurative paintings, influenced by Surrealism and Romanticism.
Surprising at her young age, Eden paints the most moving and compelling human emotions, often showcasing people of color as her subjects, in hopes to show that everyone and anyone is allowed these emotions.
_Flaunt_ had the opportunity to talk with the artist about the biggest influence in her work, the hardest challenge in her career, and the meaning behind her self portrait, _Oyster Ate Me And I Became The Pearl_, which Bill Powers, owner of the gallery praised, "and to make yourself the pearl inside an oyster is a demonstration of self-love.”
_Failed 50’s Inspired Hair And Makeup_, 2021. Acrylic and mixed media on cardboard and paper. 44 x 28 inches. Courtesy of half gallery & the artist.
**What has had the biggest influence in your art?**
The biggest influence on my art has been my lifelong tendency toward existential questions. A lack of strong feelings of identity/community and thus of interest in my “self” is to blame for an inclination engendered in childhood towards questions of a universal scale. This mode of questioning means that most subjects are of interest to me and are liable to inform my work. I find that sources as seemingly disparate as reality TV to Mughal miniature painting to 80s Shoujo manga are suspect to drive what I make.
**What can we expect for your new exhibition at Half Gallery in LA?**
Meditations on repetition, destruction and regeneration, idolatry, and mystery figured through angels administering stitches, ancient Chinese poetry, horny blades of grass, an ode to the rock painters of prehistory, apparitions of a dancing Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers simulacrum, girls jumping out of cakes, and more.
_Oyster Ate Me And I Became The Pearl_, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of half gallery & the artist.
**One of the new works is a self portrait, _Oyster Ate Me And I Became The Pearl_, what are you trying to transmit with this piece?**
This piece is not intended to be a direct self-portrait but, like many of my works, has a title in the first person as. I am interested in exploring fundamental similarities and inclinations among people that are present despite differences in culture, place, time and perhaps more. In that sense it is a self-portrait as I often first notice the features of our species that fascinate me within myself. This work investigates several themes that link cosmic to human. The driving event in this work is repetition and fractals, represented here by the oyster's shells and the pearl, which is nacre over nacre. By virtue of its rarity and beauty despite these characteristics being secondary to the function of oyster addressing a parasite or errant grain of sand, it becomes precious to another animal, the only species that goes to great and sometimes life-threatening lengths for the purposes of capturing or creating beauty. The pearl's fractal nature inspires wonder in us humans, who go on to depict God and other spiritual concepts in the language of nature: repetition. Another theme is the contradictory partnership of playfulness and absurdity with the majestic, mysterious and terrifying. The idea of people revolting against the supposed law of nature in which all living things prioritize survival overall diving to threatening depths for a little shiny sphere is both ridiculous and frustratingly, horribly beautiful to me. The evolution of our brains and the very fact of our consciousness has caused us, in a great show of irony, to deem the frivolous, impractical, the entertaining, the art-for-art's-sake, as rivaling in importance our survival. This is not all romantic fancy, however. The pearl at the bottom of the ocean laughs at our frivolity, which can be charming or wildly foolish. Indeed, the global overconsumption of pleasures for the sake of pleasures and unessential excess pose a dire threat to the health of our only habitation and to the welfare of our species.
_Cake Girl_, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy of half gallery & the artist.
**Your work "features people of color as its subjects, in hopes to combat the idea that only a small percentage of people are capable of experiencing the most poignant and riveting human emotions." Can you expand on this idea?**
Among my favorite eras of art is the Renaissance. The intense pathos of the figures is among the reasons I became fascinated with representational art. There is no way I can separate such art with the fact that its patrons were most likely enjoying the spoils of colonization in some way. The concurrence of these paintings with the subjugation and obliteration of those who would never find great physical similarity with the Christs or Mary Magdalenes alerts to me a reverence for the feelings and experiences of white people. This has not dispelled with the passing of centuries. Historically the suffering of the rest of the world is negligible and their joy is a threat to the hold of power. I have a suspicion that the denial of depth of feeling is equally, if not more, insidious than the denial of intelligence. To turn a person or event into a story is to profess their/its significance, to exalt. If I depict black figures that encounter tremors of the spirit, the fearsome absurdity of existence, the miracle of love, etc as they do and have done in real life for all of time, I contribute to a struggle towards justice and equilibrium.
**What has been the biggest challenge in your life/career?**
My biggest challenge in life and in my practice has been understanding and accepting my idiosyncrasies and, instead of seeing them as fundamentally damning aberrations, realizing and applying their power.
_Blue Portrait with Orbs_, 2021. Acrylic on canvas. 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy of half gallery & the artist.
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_The Puzzle Of Dust Times Dust Equaling Fire_ is on view at Half Gallery Los Angeles from February 10th - March 6th, 2021 at 1051 S Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90019.
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