Shadow Work: How Sasha Gordon Processes Trauma With Colorful, Yet Intimate Art Works
Memory may not be a tape-recorder, but in Sasha Gordon’s work, it serves as a device for the initial transportation. Characters wander this fluxing landscape—be it a drive-through window, a master bedroom, or white suburbia—shifting through the dynamic background of her dream-like haze. As a viewer of Gordon’s narrative paintings, you are intruding on intimate scenes of inciting trauma. There’s a word for this process. “Shadow work,” according to practitioners, is a radical form of self-education, where you integrate repressed aspects of ourselves back into the main self.
When Gordon paints herself as the main protagonist, she does so as her current self, re-inhabiting a depiction of her past memory in order to access her former self. Though characters are confided together in physical space, they are emotionally disconnected from each other and their environment, trapped in their own world of drudged-up thoughts. Yet this disconnect, spliced between the physical realm, and whichever memory the mind chooses, suspended between a moment from the past and somewhere in the future, spurs from a life’s worth of repression. In Gordon’s work, the renegade version of her current self revisits dramatized scenes from her past, creating narratives of constant collision.
The New York-based artist will have a solo exhibition of her work at the Matthew Brown gallery this November, featuring her current body of work, focused on aspects of identity that she had to repress.
“I know that I’m biracial and look East Asian, that I’m queer, that I’m in a bigger body, but there are moments when I forget or question these identities, and this state of confusion and dissociation is what I want to represent in my work.”
Having figures in my paintings that resemble pieces of my identity is significant to me because I’m reclaiming myself and identity in spaces where, in the past, I wouldn’t allow myself.”
Gordon’s early body of work consists of hyper-realistic oil paintings—ants crawling along with oranges, on-top of a plastic baggie, candid selfies of teeth brushing, opened-mouth yaw-yaws, and melancholic girls staring just above the viewer—all of which burst with silent action. Focused on the outcome of every painting’s precision, she felt a growing disconnect between herself and her projects. Every hair follicle, bounced beam of light, and iris streak restricted Gordon in a planned-out process of copying the reference image with as many observable details her obsessiveness collected. Then in 2017, she injected personal narrative into her process. Using symbolism, becoming more literal with her concepts, ultimately liberating and re-energizing her love for painting. “The narrative in my work was my own, but I felt like the style I was painting in was not,” she says. Narrative and scenes from her upbringing rekindled her passion for painting, also fostering her shift from hyper-realistic compositions to story-filled scapes with surrealistic tendencies.
“I was extremely disoriented, thinking about my racial identity while growing up, because I lived in a primarily white suburb in upstate New York, constantly trying to assimilate. Having figures in my paintings that resemble pieces of my identity is significant to me because I’m reclaiming myself and identity in spaces where, in the past, I wouldn’t allow myself.”
This flux illustrates how Gordon is still processing her meditations of the key intersections of her identity. Race, sexuality, and complex thoughts on body image all hum on the canvas.
If we look at Gordon’s scenes as episodes of the same drama, blow-up dolls, the moon, and food are each recurring characters carrying the extreme weight of overwhelming emotion, remnants of her lingering anxiety or sadness.
In “Temporary,” the blow-up dolls lurk around the canvas, wearing girl-scout vest, with one even pushing the wagon where the girl-scout protagonist sits eating a thin mint. The piece embodies how aware Gordon became of her differences compared to her peers. She’d compare herself to how white and smaller the other scouts were, and how she felt large and masculine as a child, causing her to cling to the toxicity within our culture’s understanding of what is beautiful and what is femininity. Revisiting the classic scenario where a girl scout walks up to the first house to sell some of her cookies, Gordon reimagines the act of knocking at the door as her current self, who is aware and more confident with the intersections of her identity. When the man answers the door in his white Nike socks and Big Catch weekend wear, hazard orange light leaks out of the domestic spaces of his home. The protagonist already knows the danger of domesticity and looks away toward the viewer, taking a bite of the product she is meant to sell, claiming the space that caused her pain as a kid.
“Reflecting on trauma from the past is a way for me to reflect on myself and my experiences, to grow from and to understand them. It is hard for me to verbalize my thoughts and emotions when they are so personal; so expressing it through my work is a very therapeutic process for me.”
It is hard for me to verbalize my thoughts and emotions when they are so personal, so expressing it through my work is a verytherapeutic process for me.”
While this act of wild reclamation of toxic space proves therapeutic for Gordon, it doesn’t come without its costs. Self-care is still care, and diverts energy from other avenues. In “Yukine in Moonlight,” the protagonist stares off from the canvas, holding a baby doll in one hand, while the moon stares at her through her window, splashing light where she sleeps. Gordon’s mother wears a necklace with a round white stone. The pendant features an engraved face that emulates a moon. The moon’s face reflects her own mother’s expression, which serves as a motif in other works to represent her. Gordon is close to her mother; and as they both age, she feels guilty for not spending as much time with her as she should. The protagonist grips the doll that serves as the distraction from the moon, who passes judgment through the window. “The doll represents the things that distract me from my mother; prioritizing myself and my needs. Meanwhile my mother has dedicated her life to raising and taking care of my brother and me.” Yukine feels this disruption in nature, lying awake in the bed consuming the majority of the canvas the bedroom walls sprouting a field of wallpaper treelings. Rather than this painting depicting a past self, the protagonist embodies a state of limbo between the present and future, that only with time becomes enveloped in Gordon’s past.
“Living with depression and anxiety for me is a constant cycle of both being so afraid and worried, and simultaneously apathetic to everything. Knowing that some of my thoughts are just projections makes me question myself on what is real and what isn’t. I want my paintings to have this element as well, where things are extremely off and disorienting for the viewer.”
My mental health makes me project ridiculous, obsessive thoughts, which disorients my view on myself, which shows in my work by the surrealness of my paintings.”
Projections in the context of Gordon’s paintings are not see-through ghosts. They are felt, full-bodied, emotions, feelings, her memories both seeking and demanding attention from the viewer and herself. “Drive Through” presents a protagonist mid-outcry, drowned out by its surroundings. The left passenger folds in on herself, deflecting the fast-food order, intruding in the car. Meanwhile, the driver and the passenger in the back seat sit unaware to the protagonist’s anguish. This scene plays out the psychodrama of how Gordon struggles with the relationship to her body. Processing how she ate as a child, being hyper-aware of her weight and size, lead to a toxic relationship, brought in waves of self-punishment and self-hatred, leading to polarized isolation.
The drive-through worker, wetted down in blues and grays, is portrayed almost as a living ghost, and is the only one acknowledging the protagonist in the scope of the painting. Yet it is unwanted attention, unwanted support, catalyzing unwanted cycles of self-hate. Though the painting depicts the interior of a car, a space capable of movement, freedom, escape, we hover at the collision of tiny moments that initiate the protagonist’s activation. The car pulling up to the drive-through window. The break of the car. The car window sliding down. The mother looks in the rearview mirror. The brother plays a video game in the backseat. The worker extending the order to the left passenger who won’t ever reach back. All framed in the shape of a rear-view mirror, suggesting though these memories are behind us, they are still their own little sublime world that the past self still lives in.
“My mental health makes me project ridiculous, obsessive thoughts, which disorients my view on myself, which shows in my work by the surrealness of my paintings.”
Recently, a new theory of dreams suggests that dreams aren’t a meaningless fusing of experience and image. They serve a purpose. Until we are aware of the parts we repressed, we are bound to continue re-wounding ourselves in a circuit. This running hypothesis of dreams suggest the brain surfaces the right combination of sensory experiences to cauterize the trauma cycle.
Gordon’s work embodied this idea of talking to a past form of yourself, played out in psychodrama surrealism, summoning unwavering empathy for her melancholic subjects. Flares of found photographs or selfies come to mind when looking at her candid portraits. Yet the viewer is reminded of the medium due to the saturated hues. Looking at one of Gordon’s paintings, we are the viewers, yes, feeling the work. But we are also the emotions themselves. By portraying herself—all versions of her biracial-queer-woman identity—in backgrounds inspired by her past, Gordon builds the scaffolding of communicating not only to herself, but other museum-goers in similar circumstances, proving identity is a constant state of flux.*
This article first appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 55, which is sold out. Get our latest issue by subscribing to Hi-fructose here.
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