Misfits

School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Misfits,” an exhibition of work by Anna Amato, Ailyn Lee, Tingleguts, Se Young Yim and Yirui Jia. Curated by Marianna Peragallo, the exhibition will be on view Tuesday, December 7, 2021 – Thursday, January 6, 2022, at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 141 W 21st Street, New York City.

School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Misfits,” an exhibition of work by Anna Amato, Ailyn Lee, Tingleguts, Se Young Yim and Yirui Jia. Curated by Marianna Peragallo, the exhibition will be on view Tuesday, December 7, 2021 – Thursday, January 6, 2022, at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 141 W 21st Street, New York City.

A misfit is something or someone who is different from others and does not seem to belong in a particular group or situation. This in-between state speaks to something many of us felt and continue to feel navigating our pandemic world. We are not how we used to be. Our roles have changed, and we are in limbo. We don’t feel like we fit where we did before. How do we respond to our new place as misfits? Inspired by a series of drawings Anna Amato accidentally started making in 2020, the artworks in this exhibition embody the incongruence of the present moment.

Like many people in the early days of the pandemic, Anna was disinfecting her groceries with alcohol. She kept her receipts and sprayed them with alcohol too, for good measure. The alcohol blurred the words and numbers on her receipts and left abstract drawings in their place. In those abstractions, she discovered expressive faces, symbols, textures, animals and disjointed figures. These works are misfits because they are no longer receipts and not quite drawings. In Anna’s case, she began to make this exploration more intentional. It became an opportunity to find beauty and meaning in an otherwise anxious experience.

Similarly, Ailyn Lee channels her anxieties and insomnia into surreal videos as a way of healing. She reconstructs anxiety-filled moments through an atmosphere of symbols that make her feel safe. Tingleguts responded to his experience as a misfit by making an artwork that offers generosity, touch and connection in the moment we need it most. The Love Letters project includes 300 mixed media pieces on 9"x12" paper that visitors can pick up, inspect, rearrange as they please and take as a gift. Se Young Yim created warped chair sculptures that appear to be surrogate bodies. Their lack of seats and usability imply potential movement and an apprehension of getting close to others. Yirui Jia conjured manic worlds that capture the humorous and otherworldly internal conflict of modern people. Her paintings show the love, hate, loneliness, obsession and urges of our moment.

By integrating accidents and hybridity in their work, these five cross-cultural, cross-generational artists give us permission to feel vulnerable and seen in our misfit state. They acknowledge the chaos and give us space to connect within it.