Gravity and Grace 2022, Michael Bugelli Gallery, The Old Mercury Building.

Ink on rice paper. Selected works, top-bottom, L-R: 'Self', 'Anna Delvey', 'Simone Weil', 'Kathe Kollwitz', 'Self', 'Lana del Rey', 'Shirley Collins', 'Self', 'Lisa Rinna', 'Yma Sumac'

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“The links that we cannot forge are evidence of the transcendent.”

-Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace  p.95

 

Isabella Maria Foster is going to church.  In her latest series of portraits, she uses wet ink to manifest a reliquary of her personal icons: mediators between the worldly and spiritual that include saints, martyrs, prostitutes, and Foster herself.

 

By repeatedly conjuring subjects including Saint Agatha, Simone Weil, Cora Pearl, Cleopatra, and The Virgin Mary, Foster finds solace in the devotional act of drawing as meme-making. She relates herself to historic pilgrims and penitents, connecting to them via the front-facing camera of pious, ritualized acts of self-examination. In doing so, Foster writes herself into a new myth, running her fingers along a rosary of spiritual hyperlinks in search of missed connections.

 

​-Loren Kronemyer, 2022