For her first solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac, Zadie Xa presents new works spanning diverse mediums that reflect on ideas of interspecies communication and transmutation, world-building and symbols of protection and power. Born in Vancouver, Canada and now based in London, Xa draws upon her Korean heritage and its rich mythological tradition, as well as the history of art and craft, speculative fiction, pop culture, music and fashion, to create her own deeply personal mythology.

I think of every exhibition as an installation and almost as one whole work. I think really, really deeply about what each image is going to be and where everything is going to lay in the space. They always have to have a relationship to one another, you understand that those things might be happening in conjunction or parallel to one another. So this idea of nonlinear time is important to me, and this idea of different worlds happening at the same time, of journeying, whether that’s to different worlds, the underworld, a psychological liminal space. — Zadie

Across expansive landscapes that span monumental, and, in some cases, polyptych paintings, Xa combines memories of the Pacific Northwest, where she grew up, Korean landscapes studied through photography and historical painting, and fictional elements into composite topographies that recall the dreamlike world-building achieved by science fiction and fantasy artists like Frank Frazetta: an important reference for the artist. As she explains: ‘this amalgamation of different spaces into something desired but abstract is a visual reflection on metaphysical ideas of homeland’: a reformulation of landscape through diasporic experience.

This exhibition is the artist’s first in France. Tying it to the art-historical landscape of its surroundings, Xa cites Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, painters of the Parisian Symbolist movement in the late 19th century, as inspirations for her new group of paintings. ‘I’ve always been interested in semiotics and signs and symbols’, the artist explains, but the fantastical pastoral scenes in these new works betray this particular influence. 

On view alongside the artist’s most recent paintings and textile works is a group of four bronze sculptures, which represents a new facet of her practice. These sculptures were created in collaboration with the artist Benito Mayor Vallejo, with whom Xa has worked closely since 2006. They also represent concentrations of talismanic power within the symbolic visual language that runs throughout the exhibition. Cast in bronze, a material the artist is working with for the first time, they take on an imposing new weight and a scale within her practice.

At the entrance to the exhibition is a sculpture made up of intertwined creatures, all facing different directions so that no matter the angle from which it is observed, it is always looking back at the viewer. One of the creatures represented is a haetae: a Korean mythological animal often placed at the entrances of civic buildings to protect and to judge and refuse entry to the wicked. As the artist explains: ‘it’s thought that if you were to present yourself in front of this animal, it would be able to tell if you were a morally righteous or not person, which I think is an appropriate thing to encounter as you walk into a space.’

Like in her recent solo presentations at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022–23) and Space K, Seoul (2023), textile is an integral part of Rough hands weave a knife, emerging both through the multicoloured patchwork frames that surround some of the paintings and through stand-alone works made from irregular scraps of linen and denim. In them, Xa draws on the visual language of European and American Modernist geometric abstraction as well as on the Korean bojagi patchwork tradition. Bringing together these pools of reference, Xa bridges the gap between practices considered ‘art’ and those considered ‘craft’, challenging the established hierarchical relationship between them.