Many Small Fires is delighted to present I Will Wade Out, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-centered artist Lily Wong. The exhibition of new works on paper is the artist’s 1st solo show on the West Coastline.
In her hottest overall body of get the job done, Wong demonstrates on seeking ancestral and spiritual connectivity by way of a culturally fractured lens. This collection of paintings stems from Wong’s practical experience of reconnecting with Classic Chinese Medicine (TCM). Her allegorical paintings reference overall body meridian charts, physical force points and bodily imbalances. The works existing figures who inhabit various states of navigation or disorientation.
Numerous of Wong’s new paintings incorporate botanic imagery that alludes to TCM procedures of integrating the human body and brain with the pure planet. Sprawling tree limbs, vines, and roots mirror the prolonged postures and gestures of the bodies they accompany. These figures search for a community of their possess, as seen in To Move By way of, 2022 or Into the Ripe Air, 2022. In the latter, a constellation of stars corresponds with the lung meridian of the left arm. In other functions, the figures uncover themselves stunted by their uncertainty. The protagonist in Dislocations (Pell Street), 2022, finds herself alone on the deserted streets of NYC’s Chinatown. In Command Place, 2022, two figures carry a door created devoid of a knob – an inaccessible entryway.
The exhibition usually takes its title from the very first line of Bjork’s rendition of e.e. cumming’s poem “Crepuscule”. In her tune “Sun in My Mouth,” the singer vulnerably and exuberantly welcomes an exploration of sensations. Wong shares a identical point of view as she considers the methods we endeavor to access inherited knowledge and working experience its manifestations on the human body.