Sasha Gordon.
Photo: WILLIAM JESS LAIRD
Sasha Gordon Is Making Waves with Her Potent and Humorous Self-Portraits
The fast-rising artist uses painting as an outlet for her own experiences as a queer Asian American woman
At Sasha Gordon’s recent solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, visitors couldn’t help but stare intently at the chrome suit of armor that gleams with a mirrorlike sheen or the sweater with each thread painstakingly woven by the artist’s brush. “The absolute skill and ingenuity of technique that Sasha expresses through her paintings is a sight to behold,” said Alex Gartenfeld, exhibition curator and ICA Miami artistic director, in a conversation with Gordon during Art Basel in Miami Beach.
Sasha Gordon, whose 2022 artwork Pinky Promise was included in the exhibition “Hands of Others” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: GENEVIEVE HANSON
Marking the artist’s solo museum debut, the exhibition featured eight large-scale self-portraits ranging from whimsically surreal scenes to art historical depictions, all conveying various emotional states. “They express an incredible spirit of generosity, humor, candor, self-possession,” Gartenfeld added. “All these great things that Sasha represents.”
Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2020, the Somers, New York–born artist has been one to watch. Known equally for her technical prowess and the intimate themes of feminine empowerment in her work, she already has a number of solo exhibitions under her belt, including “Hands of Others” at Jeffrey Deitch in New York in 2022 and “Enters Thief” at Matthew Brown in Los Angeles in 2021.
Sasha Gordon, whose 2022 artwork Almost A Very Rare Thing was included in the exhibition “Hands of Others” at Jeffrey Deitch. Photo: GENEVIEVE HANSON
As a child, Gordon spent hours after school painting rather than doing her homework. At RISD, her professors encouraged her to start looking at the classics—“Caravaggio, Titian, and Botticelli,” she recalled at the ICA talk—while at the same time “they were pushing me to think more conceptually about art.” She developed a hybrid style of inserting her own body, often nude, into canonical scenes, where self-portraits such as Like Froth (2022) recall the vulnerability of Botticelli’s Venus. Painting became an outlet for her own experiences as a queer Asian American woman.
Potent depictions of emotions show up throughout Gordon’s work: In Volcano (2023), her face appears on a mountainside erupting with lava, twisted in rage but also a sense of empowerment. “There are just a lot of times where I have so many emotions and I can feel invalidated by the way other people will react to it,” she told Gartenfeld. “The thought of painting this just felt natural for me—when a volcano’s going to erupt, no one’s going to question it, so it felt very comforting to paint.”
Sasha Gordon, Princess, (2023). Photo: Mark Blower; Courtesy the artist; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York; and Matthew Brown, Los Angeles
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Spring Issue under the headline “Personal Vision.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: Sasha Gordon.
Photo: WILLIAM JESS LAIRD
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