Various Small Fires is excited to announce the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Sara Anstis, and her first exhibition in Los Angeles: The Petal and the Wrist. Anstis is a world builder and storyteller. On paper, canvas, and in writing, she weaves an auto-fiction that explores the resistance and power of the imagination in the contemporary context. In these works, there is an insistence on the interconnectedness of all life forms, and a rejection of the anthropocentric: background and landscape become foreground and figure, and her human-like animals are left out of some canvases altogether, or relegated to minor roles in which they can only quietly observe.
Sara Anstis (b. 1991) is a Stockholm-born and Salt Spring Island raised artist. She received a BFA in Studio Art and Sociology at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) in 2013 and an MFA in Fine Art from Valand Academy (Gothenburg, Sweden) in 2016. In 2018, she completed the Drawing Year Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Drawing School (London, United Kingdom). Anstis has had solo shows at Kasmin, New York; Various Small Fires, Seoul; Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal; and Fabian Lang, Zurich. Recent group exhibitions include those held at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo; Kasmin Gallery, New York; Galerie Derouillon, Paris; Lyles & King, New York; and Palazzo Monti, Brescia. She has received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Jerwood Arts Bursary, and the Anna-Lisa Thomson Foundation, amongst others.
