Sow & Tailor is proud to present The Fallen Woman by Sensie, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, on view from September 18 to October 23, 2022. An opening reception for the artist will be held on September 18th from 12 – 4 PM.
Sensie was born in East Houston, Texas, a factory-dominated neighborhood. The industrial backdrop was like a small gray island of machines, young mothers, and smog. Creating charcoal and graphite drawings as a young artist, she began to pull equally from her imagination and surroundings, creating pictures of monsters and machines while drawing her family and Houston neighborhood.
The artist’s first solo exhibition, The Fallen Woman, presents her versatile talent spanning works on paper, illustration, painting, animation, and installation. The Fallen Woman tells a story of love, loss, and chaos in a young woman’s life.
Animation grounded the artist’s work as she sought to create images based on her own life and the lives of black women around her. Pulling from influences like Ralph Bashki and Richard Williams, Sensie began to form a highly expressive and provocative drawing and animation style.
The women Sensie depicts in her art are often distressed, facing drama from lovers and family, internal struggles, and battles with real and imagined beasts. Her characters are expressive and fluid, and you can feel their experiences in the image.
Works like The Fallen Woman, 2022, center the anguish on the face of the subject. Sensie’s background as an animator and storyteller brings the character’s emotions to the forefront. She has cropped the image, portraying only the women’s face and upper torso against a desolate gray and yellow landscape.
The painting’s palette and sensibility recall film noir. The graphite on canvas painting focuses on the woman and her plight, not showing the dogs she fights against but instead bringing her physical and mental struggles to the forefront.
The works in The Fallen Woman are in conversation through the mediums of animation, charcoal, and oil.
Originating from a period in the artist’s practice devoted to painting, Sensie’s images on canvas originate from drawings on paper, film cells, and fabric.
Her new paintings evolve these drawings by zooming in on specific aspects of the characters’ expressions and experiences or changing scale to illuminate the stories central to the work in new ways. The artist has also painted a site-specific mural for the exhibition, bringing to life the antagonist of The Fallen Woman on a large scale in charcoal on the walls within Sow and Tailor’s space.
Alongside animations, a series of works on paper feature the drawings used to compose moving images.
The cells provide a glimpse of the process while standing on their own as charcoal and graphite work, speaking to the abstraction of figures often present in the artist’s work. Sensie’s debut exhibition at Sow and Tailor furthers the gallery’s mission to cultivate community through its work to support emerging artists.
Text by Joshua Oduga
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Biography
Sensie
Sensie (b. Houston Texas) lives and works in Los Angeles. She is a multidisciplinary artist working in animation, drawing, painting, performance and design. Her work was exhibited recently in the group exhibition Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose, organized by Sow & Tailor at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Los Angeles, CA. The Fallen Woman exhibition is the artist’s first solo show.
Joshua Oduga
Joshua Oduga is an independent curator, and writer focused on archives, alternative histories, film, the intersection of contemporary art and design, and oral and musical traditions. He is currently the Director of Jeffrey Deitch’s Los Angeles gallery, located at 7000 Santa Monica Avenue. In 2022 he launched Central Server Works, a gallery and collaborative platform, working with artists to create exhibitions and produce film and film theater projects. He previously worked alongside founder Mark Bradford at Art + Practice, organizing exhibitions and public programs. Oduga has also organized exhibitions and programs with the Hammer Museum, The Broad, The Getty Research Institute, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Sow & Tailor
Sow & Tailor is a family run gallery in Los Angeles, dedicated to supporting emerging artists through exhibitions and various projects. Our aim is to foster a space where a local and global community of creatives can thrive. The gallery was founded as a family run project between artist Greg Ito, his wife Karen Galloway, and family friend Stefano di Paola. The project opened two months following the birth of Karen and Greg’s daughter, Spring, as the idea that this would be a family business she could grow up around, participate in, and ultimately inherit.
