Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

ICA Miami presents the first solo museum presentation for New York–based artist Sasha Gordon. The surreal paintings and drawings that Gordon creates explore the complexities of bodily experience in gorgeous and hyper-realistic detail.

Often depicting herself, Gordon is keenly aware of the art historical themes of portraiture and self-portraiture, and of the politics of representation. She approaches these categories with inventiveness and humor and a unique ability to make fantasy real.

Gordon’s images survey a wide range of emotional possibilities while exploring the rich plurality of her identity as a queer Asian American woman. Depicting intimacy, empowerment, vulnerability, and the feminine form, her work critically engages issues of self-image, racial prejudice, interpersonal relationships, and the attending psychological impacts, while also exhibiting discomfort.

In her most recent work, including new paintings presented at ICA Miami, Gordon depicts herself in a condition of becoming. Transforming into animal, botanical, and geological phenomena, Gordon enacts the process of objectifying bodies, while examining personal experiences of alienation and challenging taboos and standards of representation. Through these avatars, she portrays the othering of unconventional human bodies and examines her own experiences of alienation, while questioning the logic of certain limiting social norms.

Sasha Gordon (b. 1998, Somers, New York) lives and works in New York. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence, in 2021. Solo exhibitions include “Hands of Others,” Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2022) and “Enters Thief,” Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2021). Her work is included in the collections of ICA Miami; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Sasha Gordon: Surrogate Self” is curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director.