Anna Zorina Gallery is pleased to present Pink Moon Ceremony, Nadine Faraj’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The show marks the first presentation of the artist’s sumi ink drawings and features her largest watercolor paintings to date. The works on view demonstrate the artist’s masterful control of these notoriously difficult media. This series, inspired by full moon ceremonies and dance parties, invites viewers to partake in a celebration of togetherness and of the body itself, to revel in a joy beyond consumerism. These are not ordinarily naked gatherings, on the contrary, because they take place during the coldest hours of the night participants dress in multiple layers. The nudity in these pictures is often pure fantasy.
Faraj lays bare the soul. Her characters are captured in moments of losing or finding themselves, accessing other dimensions of being through their dance, meditation or orgasm. In the work, Flower Boy & Enby High Tea Ceremony (Heaven Genderfck), figures are lost in a beat, dancing as if life depends on it. Rhythm manifests itself uniquely throughout each dancing body in the form of swirling ink and punctuations of flowers. Rich black sumi ink surrounds the figures, emphasizing the glowing intensity of a moment that feels completely alive and free.
Faraj visualizes the transcending of margins through the use of a wet-on-wet technique. This approach allows pigments to spread, blurring the image and creating a dream-like effect. Each figure’s amorphous delineation symbolizes our permeability, our interconnectedness among and beyond human life-forms. The artist represents an expansive range of identities in her work to portray her intention of celebrating and elevating our differences. She casts a specific focus on exploring queer sensuality and sexuality, embracing nonbinary and trans* bodies whole-heartedly in her art. Sexuality inflects some of these artworks heavily because sex is, after all, the original ceremony. Her perspective is that our nature, across every spectrum, is sublime.
Nadine Faraj (b. Montréal, Canada) lives and works in Montréal and New York City. She received an MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts and a BFA from Montréal's Concordia University. The artist has exhibited widely with shows in New York, Montréal, Toronto, London, Athens and Dubai. Her work has been included in numerous press articles including features in Hyperallergic, Wallpaper Magazine, a cover of A Women’s Thing Magazine, Huffington Post, Arte Fuse and Vulture.
For further information, please contact Marie Nyquist at 212-243-2100
or via email at marie@annazorinagallery.com