Rei Xiao’s first New York solo exhibition, The Flea and the Acrobat, unveils a deeply personal body of work exploring trauma, spirituality, and escapism through oil on canvas, panel, and linen.
Drawing on the Chinese-Turkish artist’s upbringing in Istanbul, central to the self-portraitures is a childhood spent in a turbulent household, shared with her mother and 15 foster cats. The creatures in the paintings, raised with equal importance as their human sibling, capture a peculiar dynamic and focal point against the backdrop of the characters and their disconnection.
Named after an episode from Stranger Things, the series reimagines the metaphor of the acrobat balancing on a rope and the flea traversing dimensions—a symbol of the artist’s escape from the confines of her obscure reality.
While a source of tension for the artist, the entities also serve as a bridge to understanding her mother’s expressions of affection, such as an unspoken bond through food. In It Was Dark Inside the Wolf, a mother figure is seen serving a meal to a table of her “young”, symbolizing silent acts of care amidst chaos.
Grotesque and whimsical with a tinge of humor, the playful exhibition invites viewers into a richly layered narrative that sheds the artist’s pain and healing ever so carefully on her acrobatic rope. Xiao’s surreal exploration of the mental health struggles associated with motherhood resonates universally, offering a visceral testament to the complexities of familial structures on the psyche. —Vivien Lee
