Grief Magic
by 2023 Brightwork Fellow Saba Taj
February 10 - April 14
About the exhibition
Grief Magic is a collection of mixed-media paintings that explore loss, memory, and resilience. The works express grief that is personal, global, and ancestral. In the language of myth and femininity, Grief Magic illustrates the drama and sorcery of heartache, and the practice of hope as resistance. The collection includes surrealist self-portraits, glittering dreamworlds of pink clouds and magical creatures, and a series of Palestinian birds that are vulnerable, endangered, persistent, legendary. Grief magic is the breaking of hearts and the breaking of cycles.
About the artist
Saba Taj is a visual artist based in Durham, NC. Inspired by beauty, queerness, and Islam, Taj engages with representation as a resilience practice. Their work includes mixed-media drawing, painting, and collage, as well as sewing and performance. Through these techniques, Taj explores the liminality of minoritized individuals as an embodiment of resistance, hope and possibility. Taj was the 2019-2020 post-MFA Fellow for the Documentary Diversity Project at CDS, former Executive Director of The Carrack Modern Art, and Southern Constellations Fellow at Elsewhere Museum. They earned their MFA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and their BA in Art Education at North Carolina Central University.
Bluecheeked. Acrylic on canvas. 2023
