An ode to the ‘feral feminine’ in the age of biowarfare, systemic violence and the collapse of the Western World, FERAL OASIS is a group show invoking nature-based knowing and the righteous rage embodied in the shadow feminine. An invocation of the sacred in all its ferocious indeterminacy, FERAL OASIS is a reclamation of all that is deathless, timeless and eternal. For the water protectors, witches, wisdom keepers and women weavers channeling truth in all ages throughout time, FERAL OASIS emblazons a cacophony of concerns cross-pollinated with tireless vulnerability. At the blinding edge where terrestrial wisdom meets technological revolution, the emotional boiling point erupts with ventricle vitriol. For all the feral sensory baddies following their gut instincts, this exhibition makes courage contagious.
Damning the floods of ancestral cortisol to court a more evolved human response necessary for healing, learning and rest – what if the act of creation was an invitation to stop making sense? To unmask professionally with innate polysensory magic? In a world of performative pleasantries, it’s refreshing to encounter a raw soul. Functionalizing their sorrows to show up authentically amidst heavy corruption’s borderless collective grief, the artists in this show serve as a bittersweet reminder that our wounds were never a barrier to our integrity; they are the palpable sting that makes our commitments sing.
FERAL OASIS October 15th-November 1st
Cia Gallery 1108 Cypress Ave. Ridgewood, Queens
Opening Reception Thursday October 15, 6-9pm
DJ Set by Isis Swaby
Curated by Katie Cercone
Featured Artists:
Tyvette Symone @tyvettesymone
Isis Swaby @isisswaby
Robin Kang @spiderwoman1s0s
Sal Chen @sal.chen
Yuliya Lanina @yuliya.lanina
Interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator Sal Chen grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, intergenerational, immigrant family. Also an educator and urban gardener, Sal is currently pursuing an MFA at the School of Visual Arts. With a body of work exploring the threshold where inner ecologies meet outer political realities, Sal is deeply curious about the movement of the spirit across social, political, and cultural paradigms. Expounding upon concepts of kinship, ecologies and the corporeal, from a young age Chen engaged in process-oriented art-making, piecing together the complexity of her intersectional identity as a queer, neurodivergent, Asian American femme. When not making art probing the shadow realms of collective anger and shame, Sal works as a teaching artist serving communities of care around the city with programming focused on cultivating connection and creativity. “It may have once been safer for us to remain silent, to be unseen and unheard— but we have reached a collective boiling point, a moment on this timeline, where it is more dangerous to shrink and be silent. Instead, our survival, my survival, requires that I claim voice and space,” proclaims Sal. Positing the body as a site of political reckoning, Sal’s soul-stirring navigations ripple forward with muses, memory and medicine.
Tyvette Symone, a self-taught mixed-media artist based in Brooklyn, New York, is known for her work with natural materials like crystals, taxidermy, tree bark, dirt, paper, mirror and pressed flowers. Digging deep beneath the symptoms of mental illness, in brilliant visual metaphor, Symone weaves in threads of her own personal story to radically destigmatize the mental health conversation. Probing subconscious residues that go beyond mental perception, inspiration from nature – particularly the artists’ reclaimed overgrown nature-scapes – rises up with metaphysical meaning in Symone’s poignant and nostalgic, self-referential monuments to embodied existence.
An interdisciplinary artist bridging new and traditional media to create alternate realities, Yuliya Lanina creates haunting imagery rooted in sexuality, trauma and identity. For the FERAL OASIS exhibition, her work Always and Forever (2020) will be on view, an animated short with music and sound design by Nina Young. Following the journey of Lanina’s alter ego, a young kitten is led by a high-heeled spider into another dimension wondering: will it hurt or heal? Set under the skirt of the Wise Tigress, the work speaks to bearing witness to the hidden somatic pain we carry in our bodies from traumas long past. Playful and quirky, Lanina’s work straddles the line between sexy and absurd, with a focus on physical and psychic reconstruction. Whether working on paper, animation or with mechanical sculpture and performances, her work consistently stitches together fragments of traumatized consciousness, embracing the most nonsensical and surprising of psychic discoveries along the way.
A Harlem-native multidisciplinary artist working across photography, painting, design, and sound, Isis Swaby challenges conventional narratives to inspire groundbreaking dialogue while preserving legacy and culture in her creative work. Deeply influenced by her roots in Jamaican culture and the legacy of her father, iconic dub and reggae musician Augustus Pablo, Swaby’s layered, multimedia storytelling spans genres. Inspired by photography, assemblage painting, sound installation and live music, Isis interweaves heritage with contemporary influences. For the October exhibition at Cia Gallery, Isis unveils In the Film, a portrait series of Brooklyn rapper Jungle Pussy, which set the stage for the music video Jaded (off JP’s 2024 EP Cosmic Not Chronological).
A visual investigation in film exploring life, death, rebirth, peace, culture, and the question of American identity, Isis’s premier photo series considers the ways Black identity and cultural expression exist within — and sometimes challenge — the larger framework of American culture. Through portraiture and observation, Swaby captures moments that question what is preserved, what is erased, and whose stories become part of the cultural record. Translating her original film photographs for display as light boxes, objects of static photography become illuminated icons. Utilizing both the formal and conceptual properties of light, Isis invites viewers to encounter the images anew. The illumination becomes a metaphor for life, memory, visibility, and rebirth, while the darkness surrounding the images suggests absence, death, and what has been left unseen. With her photographic lens straddling the liminal, in-between spaces of meaning, Isis asks the viewer to consider how culture is documented, remembered, and continually reconstructed. With Jungle Pussy illuminating her gilded visual narrative, Swaby examines the relationship between individual expression and collective culture, questioning how contemporary Black life contributes to and complicates the American cultural landscape. In the Film ultimately asks viewers to reconsider the photograph not simply as documentation, but as a space where identity, memory, culture, and history are constantly being rewritten.
Multidisciplinary artist, weaver and energy healer, Robin Kang is known for her woven tapestries at the intersection of ancient wisdom, ecological awareness, and technological innovation. Engaging weaving as a bridge between traditional craft and computational processes, Kang’s craft is rooted in global textile traditions. Embracing weaving as both an ancient spiritual practice and a contemporary medium for cultural and technological dialogue, Kang has studied with master weavers from Mayan, Quechua and Scandinavian traditions as well as been initiated into the Shipibo-Conibo lineage. Having undergone a series of immersive shamanic initiations in South America involving plant medicine and ancestral weaving techniques, Kang’s current practice fuses past, future, healing and transformation. Splicing plant-inspired motifs with motherboard-like patterns to invoke the dialogue between nature and technology, Kang’s symbolic references to circuitry, digital glitches and electromagnetic fields parallel the artist’s explorations in shamanic energy work. Integrating natural plant-dyed fibers with synthetic threads, Kang examines the dualities of tradition and innovation, mysticism and computation, terrestrial wisdom and technological evolution.
About CIA Gallery
CIA Gallery [the center for information alternatives gallery] is an artist-run space in
New York City.
Curatorial Board
See the CIA website for open calls and opportunities to become and artist member
