Image: Yana Lehey
August 3 - 28, 2020
Opening event: Sunday, August 9, 2-4pm
Artist talk: Friday, August 21, 5:30-6:30pm
Showing as a part of SALA Festival concurrently with Xenitia, Evie Hassiotis
Please join us in The Exhibition Space for Face Up, a solo exhibition by Yana Lehey for SALA Festival. Face Up is a series of large-scale watercolour portraits of youth climate activists.
Inspired by the energy and drive of youth climate activist from around the world, Yana has produced a body of work that celebrates determination and conviction. The series of larger-than-life portraits are arresting in their scale, and in their stance. Yana has taken inspiration from Australian artist Cherry Hood, creating intensity and conveying emotion through the glowering expression of the subjects’ faces. The levity of these large-scale works seeks to emulate the importance of their work. Yana has also focused on Indigenous activists, highlighting and centring their voices within the climate change discussion.
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Face Up started life as an assignment for Life Drawing 2.2 at Adelaide Central School of Art, taught by Christopher Orchard. While sketching at the Art Gallery of SA I noticed that many portrayals of marginalised people in artworks seemed to be wearing the same pinched, fed up glower. I recognised the same expression in climate activist locally and worldwide. This caught my interest, as young climate activists are often discredited as ignorant, naive, and easily manipulated children. It brings to light a tendency to associate infantilisation with dismissal.
I decided to portray a very real and existential rage felt by a highly driven, but consistently dismissed group of people. This is especially true of the majority of the people portrayed in the Face Up series of Youth Activists. I have painted Greta Thunberg (Sweden), Jamie Margolin (USA), Vanessa Nakate (Uganda), Kevin J Patel (USA), and Isra Hirsi (USA), Xiuhtezcatl Martinez who has Indigenous Mexican heritage and is based in Colorado (USA), Artemisa Xakriabá of the Xakriabá tribe (Brazil), Helena Guaglinga of Kichwa-native & Finnish origin from Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Ecuador) and Autumn Peltier, who is Anishinaabe-kwe and a member of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation (Canada). Each activist has different strengths, different approaches, and different nuance in how they think of their activism. Despite their young age, many of these activists have been fighting for a decade or more.
The size of each portrait creates intensity which makes the gaze of each individual hard to ignore. Due to the layered nature of watercolour each piece is quite heavily worked, the facial expressions end up being quite complex. The many layers of the fragile medium make for a powerful effect, which echoes the strength in numbers of the climate movement. The portraits are deliberately composed so that most people would have to look up to meet each individual’s eyes in the portraits, creating a monument to the subject.
The point of the exhibition is to shine a light on diverse groups who are largely ignored in favour of white, comparatively privileged people. I hope it will start some conversations which need to be had.
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Yana Lehey is a student at Adelaide Central School of Art. Her primary practice is in drawing, especially ink wash and watercolour. Her recurring themes are the environment and sustainability, and subjects which connect the world on a global scale. She has done a SALA exhibition in 2017 titled Meet The Locals, using boiled down espresso to create tonal drawings of animals native to coffee-growing countries. The aim of the exhibition was to encourage the audience to ponder the origin and impact of our coffee culture. This has led to her joining the ranks of RAW artists, and participating in their 2018 ENVISION showcase. She joined the Mill in 2018, and has been developing her practice in her studio space there since then.
Yana Lehey’s exhibition started life as an assignment for Life Drawing 2.2 at Adelaide Central School of Art, taught by Christopher Orchard.
