On View: October 8–31st, Wednesday-Sunday 12-5pm
Opening Reception at Gallery 102: Friday, October 25, 4–7:30pm

Ava Martin is double majoring in Fine Art and Biology at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University. Her multi-disciplinary and intersectional background informs and inspires her art by reimagining the body, girlhood, and nature through a fantastical lens. In addition, she is a museum assistant for the Institute at the Corcoran, an undergraduate researcher in the Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Research Lab, and an undergraduate teaching assistant for Intro Biology Lab.

Artist Statement

Through painting, Chimeric Whims investigates the ties between the fantastical, the grotesque, and the uncanny. The exhibition combines different histories: western painting, Asian-American identity, speculative biology, and girlhood. Figure painting, repeated motifs, illegitimate subjects, and a muted iridescent color palette fabricate the landscapes. Chimeric Whims is a self-portrait of the artist herself. The surreal figures and atmospheres exist in the same dream world where the laws and physiological constraints are based on but not limited to reality. The natural world is the foundation, yet the figures exist in a mirage with absurd anthropomorphized animals and abstractions.