Shyama Golden, Daydream of a Nocturne, 2023, oil on linen, 72 x 60 inches
In Sri Lankan folklore, yakkas are demonic tricksters, and in the paintings of Shyama Golden, they’re alter egos. The Los Angeles-based artist presents a new body of work this month at Harper’s Chelsea 534 that uses these mythological creatures to shatter the false binary of good and evil.
Like earlier series, In My Mind, Out My Mind roots in narrative. Daydream of a Nocturne launches the uncanny storyline with a self-portrait of the artist seated in a cemetery next to a monstrous twin, rendered in unsettling washes of blues and greens. Subsequent works glimpse the artist traversing a meadow with one of her signature anthropomorphic trees on the horizon before she appears peeking from the belly of a masked creature in The Double.
Golden’s journey is psychological as she attempts to greet and embrace her inner demons before emerging anew. Each portrait witnesses the next step in her metamorphosis before she slithers from a tree in her human likeness in the bizarrely beautiful Blood Orange Moon. Set in the concrete-walled Los Angeles River, the artist echoes the symbiotic and parallel transformations of psyche and environment.
In My Mind, Out My Mind is on view through June 22 in New York—Grace Ebert