Healer. Feeler. Seer. Seen. consists of a series of paintings on panel created in Joshua Tree, California, that are informed by female archetypes of the healer, the healing and the energetic spaces created between them. In the downstairs gallery, Reid has created a series of “healers,” a community of women who, through symmetry, pattern and the symbols on and around their bodies, create spaces that explore femininity and give value to the act of healing. Stars, fruits, eyes, peace and infinity signs along with other iconography give each figure a specific significance and presence. Reid’s figures are informed by her research of female shamans and women in the healing arts, whose contributions are often undervalued historically. Reid presents her figures with a bold confrontational gaze and at an enlarged scale.
Upstairs Reid creates a space devoted to the merging of energies. A corresponding series of paintings exploring the repetition employed in both shamanistic trance and modern day healing techniques that inspire a calmed state of mind. The main female archetypal figures hanging downstairs are reproduced upstairs in a varying form. Their faces and body parts are replicated and repeated many times over, merging and converging to evoke a kind of hypnotic state. The upstairs gallery also features a space for visitors to sit and meditate. Reid has invited two healers to come into the space during the exhibition. Shauna Cummins, who works with hypnosis and will be presenting a Dream Life Hypnosis Salon and Lacy Phillips who works in manifestation and will be speaking on the process of recognizing and releasing personal blocks. Please contact the gallery for more information regarding the workshops, which will take place on April 15th and 29th.
Caris Reid was born in 1983 in Washington D.C. She received her B.F.A. from Boston University. Her work has recently been exhibited at Denny Gallery in New York, NY and Circuit12 Gallery in Dallas, TX. She lives and works in New York City.