Thaddaeus Ropac has announced the global representation of Zadie Xa. Her first solo exhibition will be in their Paris Marais gallery in March 2024. Her work was featured in Ropac’s Seoul gallery earlier this year as part of the group show Myths of Our Time, and her largest solo exhibition in London to date is currently on view at Whitechapel Gallery until the end of April. This July, Space K Seoul will open a solo exhibition of her work, which will be on view until 12th October 2023.
Zadie Xa is an incredibly dynamic artist who combines materials and mediums in an experimental and progressive way. Her distinctive voice questions how we form our identity, bringing diverse motifs and imagery into dialogue across her wide-ranging practice.
— Thaddaeus Ropac
Korean-Canadian and now living in London, Xa has developed an expansive practice that investigates the nature of diasporic identities, global histories, familial legacies and interspecies communication. She explores these themes through immersive installations that appeal to the sensory experience of the viewer, often incorporating painting, sculpture, textile, sound and performance elements. Embracing a highly collaborative mode of working, she has developed ongoing exchanges with dancers and musicians, and has worked closely with the artist Benito Mayor Vallejo since 2006.
Zadie Xa takes inspiration from diverse global references: from the history of art and craft, to speculative fiction, pop culture, music, fashion and her own Korean heritage. Korean folklore and mythology, in particular, offer rich visual and narrative traditions that inform her interdisciplinary practice, providing her projects with a ‘skeleton or backbone’ which, she explains, allows her to ‘create points of linking myself to other artists and a timeline in history.’
Narrative storytelling is a way in which I’m able to enter different worlds and think about what’s happening within the sociopolitical contemporaneously to me. My work is pushing back against that monolithic idea of what the centrepoint of culture is.
— Zadie Xa
