Artist Zadie Xa: ‘I’m drawn to wayward creatures’

“Xa is drawn to “wayward creatures” such as the legendary “nine-tailed fox spirit that transforms into a beautiful woman to lure (usually) men” and devour their innards, to “regenerate itself and become human”. The fox and coyote are seen in folklore as “dangerous, violent animals that live on the margins of society and use cunning for survival”. In these wily outcasts who move between worlds, she finds a metaphor for all those obliged to adapt and survive through charm and subterfuge”.

For her first solo show in South Korea, titled "Nine-Tailed Tall Tales: Trickster, Mongrel, Beast", Zadie Xa generates an immersive installation where ancestral crafts and performance embody ideas of kinship, women's work and community. The exhibition groups 23 works with others seen at London's Whitechapel gallery in 2022. Linen's hangings are inspired by traditional Korean quilting, or bojagi, standing as "portals or windows, but also veils", in which concepts of collage, assembling and hybridity are symbolic of the diasporic movement of her upbringing.  

The exhibition focuses on storytelling and picture-making explored through figurative oils with bojagi patchworks and interest in folkloric animals, tricksters and creatures that stand outside of binary understandings, and therefore able to critique human society and morals. 

Read the full article on The Financial Times.