Strays on Leashes, Shangyuan Art Museum, Beijing

Following a two month long art residency at Shangyuan Art Museum in Beijing, Natalia Kalicki and Susana Wessling show their work in a joint exhibition in the summer of 2020.

Natalia Kalicki is fixated on two stone lions. In Beijing, such statues are placed on either side of front doors to ward off ghosts. Their dignified mouths are frozen agape. This series of paintings and sculptures investigates the ways in which symbolism morphs when the context of a specific mythology combines with unexpected visitors in the AIR context. How do guardian lions, as vestiges of the past, behave in the 21st century? Could they themselves be embodied ghosts? Are they perplexed? Or could they be, just a little bit, like a stray on a leash?