NAOMI HAWKSLEY | HEDERA HELIX
02.10.23 - 04.1.23

“The ivy plant (Hedera helix) is an evergreen, clinging vine native to Europe and Asia. In ancient Greece it was called cissios because, according to a mythological legend it was named after the nymph, Cissos, who at a feast of the gods, danced with such joy and abandon before Dionysus that she fell dead from exhaustion at his feet. Dionysus was so moved by her performance that he urned her body into the ivy, a plant which graciously and joyfully entwines and embraces everything near it.”

Tender elements viciously wrapped in black-and-whiteness, Naomi Hawksley takes you by the hand with Hedera Helix; caressing your eyes and turning your stomachs. Like the plant, Hedera Helix is memorable in devotion, eternity, and fidelity. Soft pencil and gentle droplets embrace you in pensive concepts to not let you go easily, to take one’s heart into a world of thoughtful lifeness.

Hedera Helix takes us through the rules of girlhood, and around the commonality of existing in public. Strangers’ eyes in constant flutter, following the way you move around the room. Naomi describes her pieces as a translation of the convoluted ways we try to figure out a humane relationship with beauty and what it means to be followed by beauty’s all-encompassing eye.  

In her pieces, we are made to understand the connections between braids, dogs, shadows, and she. Patience and cruelty being taught in meaningful defiance. Dogs representing the way in which these femme-centered rules are prevalent in public spaces. Shadows as a means of never giving room, braids invoking the effervescence of being a girl, a teen, a woman. While the works in Hedera Helix are soft and approachable, her subjects remain deep and echo loudly.

Naomi Hawksley (b. 2000) is an artist based in San Fransisco, Califronia and a recent graduate of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hawksley has exhbited at Southern Exposure, Solo Show, and is currently working as a curator at London-based label and collective, odyXxey.

Special thanks to Meg Cule (text), Charlotte Mandell (flier) and Ian Vecchiotti (documentation).

PRESS: ArtReview, Alexandra Drexelius.

Please click here to download press release with available works.