Artist Spotlight: Sasha Gordon

This week we take a look at one of the most exciting talents around, Sasha Gordon.

Born in 1998 in Somers, NY, the artist now lives and works in Brooklyn. The daughter of a Polish-Jewish-American father and a Korean-born immigrant mother, Gordon grew up in a predominantly white, conservative suburb. The young artist’s social environment created deep-rooted feelings of estrangement and a disoriented denial of self. Uninspired, she set out to re-tell her own story by confronting her self-doubt and reclaiming her identity as a queer Asian woman.

Gordon’s vivid compositions conjure scenes from her childhood, supplanting the oversexualized and objectified images of Asian women with those of the female body that carry a palpable sense of unease. Her almost obsessive attention to detail — from painstakingly-recreated droplets of water to glassy orb-like eyes framed by delicate eyelashes — reference the artist’s own hypersensitivity and dysmorphia, and the plight of those who, like her, have felt under scrutiny for their existence outside of social hegemony.

Gordon sometimes represents her nude older self revisiting these dream-like scenes, the physical manifestation of a previously repressed and now empowered self. In later pieces, the naked body is rendered in a psychedelic-hued palette, highlighting the subjects’ bellies and folds of flesh. The artist’s nude body literally fills the canvas, commanding the viewer to look upon it as something uncanny, yet powerful.

Sasha Gordon: “I am so obsessed with portraiture, but I also think there are these emotions I have that almost feel not human. So I want to portray these feelings through other objects and materials.”

Surrogate Self, Gordon’s first solo museum presentation, is on view at ICA Miami until 10 March 2024.

Images by Sasha Gordon.