Zadie Xa Rough hands weave a knife

12 April—26 May 2024

Paris Marais

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For her first solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac, Zadie Xa presents new works spanning diverse mediums that reflect on ideas of interspecies communication and transmutation, world-building and symbols of protection and power. Born in Vancouver, Canada and now based in London, Xa draws upon her Korean heritage and its rich mythological tradition, as well as the history of art and craft, speculative fiction, pop culture, music and fashion, to create her own deeply personal mythology.

Watch a video of the artist discussing her new works and the exhibition.

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Watch a video of the artist discussing her new works and the exhibition.

I think of every exhibition as an installation and almost as one whole work. I think really, really deeply about what each image is going to be and where everything is going to lay in the space. They always have to have a relationship to one another, you understand that those things might be happening in conjunction or parallel to one another. So this idea of nonlinear time is important to me, and this idea of different worlds happening at the same time, of journeying, whether that’s to different worlds, the underworld, a psychological liminal space. — Zadie Xa

Across expansive landscapes that span monumental, and, in some cases, polyptych paintings, Xa combines memories of the Pacific Northwest, where she grew up, Korean landscapes studied through photography and historical painting, and fictional elements into composite topographies that recall the dreamlike world-building achieved by science fiction and fantasy artists like Frank Frazetta: an important reference for the artist. As she explains: ‘this amalgamation of different spaces into something desired but abstract is a visual reflection on metaphysical ideas of homeland’: a reformulation of landscape through diasporic experience.

Pulgasari. May you always be protected, 2024 Oil on linen 180 x 400 cm (70.87 x 157.48 in)

This exhibition is the artist’s first in France. Tying it to the art-historical landscape of its surroundings, Xa cites Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, painters of the Parisian Symbolist movement in the late 19th century, as inspirations for her new group of paintings. ‘I’ve always been interested in semiotics and signs and symbols’, the artist explains, but the fantastical pastoral scenes in these new works betray this particular influence.

Odilon Redon
Le Jour, 1910
Abbaye de Fontfroide, Narbonne

On view alongside the artist’s most recent paintings and textile works is a group of four bronze sculptures, which represents a new facet of her practice. These sculptures were created in collaboration with the artist Benito Mayor Vallejo, with whom Xa has worked closely since 2006. They also represent concentrations of talismanic power within the symbolic visual language that runs throughout the exhibition. Cast in bronze, a material the artist is working with for the first time, they take on an imposing new weight and a scale within her practice.

At the entrance to the exhibition is a sculpture made up of intertwined creatures, all facing different directions so that no matter the angle from which it is observed, it is always looking back at the viewer. One of the creatures represented is a haetae: a Korean mythological animal often placed at the entrances of civic buildings to protect and to judge and refuse entry to the wicked. As the artist explains: ‘it’s thought that if you were to present yourself in front of this animal, it would be able to tell if you were a morally righteous or not person, which I think is an appropriate thing to encounter as you walk into a space.’

Like in her recent solo presentations at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022–23) and Space K, Seoul (2023), textile is an integral part of Rough hands weave a knife, emerging both through the multicoloured patchwork frames that surround some of the paintings and through stand-alone works made from irregular scraps of linen and denim. In them, Xa draws on the visual language of European and American Modernist geometric abstraction as well as on the Korean bojagi patchwork tradition. Bringing together these pools of reference, Xa bridges the gap between practices considered ‘art’ and those considered ‘craft’, challenging the established hierarchical relationship between them.

Bojagi are made by patchworking scraps of fabric: often silk. Though inspired by traditional Korean techniques, the artist replaces the typical materials with fabrics that have gained popularity much more recently, such as the denim used in the outer layer of this work, referencing the fashion trends familiar to the artist from her upbringing in Canada. Xa’s use of such fabrics in her textile works materialises her exploration of diasporic identities by addressing the role of fashion and of fabric choices in self-presentation.

Vancouver Shoreline, 2024
Sewn fabrics and wooden rod
130 x 170 cm (51.18 x 66.93 in)

Silk patchwork bojagi Collection of the British Museum, London

Guided by the principles of interdisciplinarity and immersivity, Xa views every exhibition as a work of art in itself, and as a continuation of the universes created in previous exhibitions. Each painting is linked to the others through unexpected visual resonances or repetitions, while several of the characters voyage between paintings and even across mediums, slipping in and out of sight as the visitor moves through the exhibition to give an impression of non-linear time and of multiple parallel yet connected universes.

Among the characters that recur between works is Princess Bari, conductor of the souls of the dead to the afterlife in Korean mythology, who reappears in several of the paintings on view. Xa explains: ‘this one figure, I became almost fixated as being the protagonist of the entire exhibition. But at the same time, I don't think about the different characters as being separate. So this idea that all the characters are perhaps one person that is able to shapeshift over time and space.’

Rough hands weave a knife, 2024

Oil on linen 200 x 180 cm

(78.74 x 70.87 in)

As the artist explains, the exhibition has at its heart ‘my indulgence in my desire to illustrate new worlds’, situated at the intersection between near and far, real and fantastical, lived and longed for.

Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight, 2024
Oil on linen
200 x 180 cm(78.74 x 70.87 in)

Tricksters, Mongrels, Beasts, 2023 Oil on canvas Triptych 240 x 600 cm (94.49 x 236.22 in)

Surrealist women artists such as Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini were central to Xa as she conceptualised the exhibition for the way they mined the potential of dream, fantasy and the unconscious to envisage new societal possibilities. Through metamorphing figures in which the animal and the human are placed in direct communication with one another, Xa harnesses the symbolic power of animals across cultures and traditions to highlight particular human traits and behaviours, or, like Carrington did before her, to express particularities of womens’ experience of the world.

Leonora Carrington

Pastoral, 1950

The title of the exhibition, Rough hands weave a knife, originated when the artist noticed the roughness of her own hands during the physically intense process of making the works on view. The titular knife is an extension of the symbolism of power and protection that runs throughout the exhibition, but also nods to modes of manual creation, particularly within domestic spheres, similarly reflecting a valorisation of the manual work involved in artistic practices that draw on craft traditions.

Sewn Seeds, 2024 Oil on linen with sewn fabric 200 x 180 cm (78.74 x 70.87 in)

Resilience: 4 Ways of Knowing, 2024 Oil on linen with sewn fabric 200 x 180 cm (78.74 x 70.87 in)

Three of the sculptures on view are based on characters from performances the artist presented at the Venice Biennale (2019) and at the National Gallery, London (2021), and reference Korean funerary dolls, which would traditionally be carved in wood and placed on the casket to accompany the dead on their journey to the next world, providing protection, care or entertainment along the way.

Xa’s reimaginings of these figures – an orca on human legs beating a drum, or a nine-tailed fox performing a handstand on human hands – come alive against the backdrop of the paintings to give the exhibition a sense of lyricism and movement.

Passages via moonlight and non linear time, 2024 Oil on linen Diptych 180 x 360 cm (70.87 x 141.73 in)

The foxes, crows and seagulls that weave in and out of the exhibition are drawn from the artist’s urban reality, while other characters – cloaked figures with birds’ heads or feathered tails – are imagined hybrids. For Xa, animals carry abundant allegorical power, just as they do in Korean folklore and mythology, which also offers the artist a rich pool of creatures and characters with which to people her paintings. ‘I feel like those symbols hold genuine power and magic when placed within the ecosystem of my work,’ says Xa.

Knowledge Seeker, Soothsayer, Great Grandmother, 2024
Oil on linen
200 x 250 cm (78.74 x 98.43 in)

The nine-tailed fox, or kumiho, is a metamorphic spirit found in Japanese,

Chinese and South Korean mythology capable of shapeshifting into a ravishing woman in order to entrap and devour men, thereby becoming human itself. Recurring across Xa’s work, it embodies what the artist explains as the ‘trickster’ archetype: a disruptive outsider whose presence both provokes and inspires change in dominant social and cultural orders.

Transformation, Remembrance, Renewal, 2024

Oil on linen

160 x 160 cm (62.99 x 62.99 in)

I seem to have this fixation with power and the ordinance of what society society has constructed as who yields that. I think for me, there's always been a real interest in figures who are considered outcasts in society. This is why there is such an interest towards very specific city animals or people who have been sidelined or marginalized in history and whose stories we don't always readily know about. — Zadie Xa

Friendship and Birdsong, 2024 Oil on linen 70 x 90 cm (27.56 x 35.43 in)

The duty of all birds, all winged creatures is vigilance. We remember: Seagull, 2024 Oil on linen 65 x 50...

The duty of all birds, all winged creatures is vigilance. We remember: Crow, 2024 Oil on linen 65 x 50...

Clothes and costumes inspired by traditional Korean garments are also a key aspect of Xa’s practice, both worn in her performances and presented as standalone pieces. ‘Clothing allows you to change who you are,’ says Xa. ‘It mediates the person that you, on that particular day, wish to present to the world.’ When making the items of clothing, she thinks ‘a lot about ideas of magic and shapeshifting’: ‘the idea of changing form, changing who you are’ – the same reflection she invites the viewer to share as they explore the exhibition.