Opening this week, [Siri Kaur’s](https://www.instagram.com/sirikaur/?hl=en) exhibition _SHE TELLS ALL_ dives deeper into her exploration of identity and representation through a spiritual lens, photographing witches of Southern California. The show will feature recreations of neon signs found on psychic storefronts, hung next to the photographs being exhibited. Thinking about the performative nature of identity, Kaur uses portraiture to bring up questions of this through the identity of the American witch. The theatricality brings a playfulness to the photographs, with the crystal balls, burning incense, and neon signs marking a stylization of one’s own identity.
Kaur has a particular concern for the photographic quality of the occult, exploring these ideas along with those concerning identity and diversity. She has shown her works in solo shows at several notable galleries including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She recently was a Professor of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design from 2007 to 2018, and she lives and works in Los Angeles. Kaur grew up in an American Sikh ashram in Boston during the 1970s New Age movement, and when moving to Los Angeles, she found a connection to the city through a similar cultural ethos.
The women in the photographs can be identified as witches, psychics, clairvoyants, light workers, mediums, spirit guides, healers, brujas, practitioners of Santeria, Druids, and any sort of combination of these things. The identities are multiple and diverse, and Kaur’s photographs embody this fluidity. The divine feminine energy of Kaur’s exhibition illuminate a diverse representation of these women who are doing work to guide us down our current path. They are helping us find some sort of meaning in the turbulent world of today.
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The opening reception and preview will be on October 30, 2019 and will bring several of the mystical subjects to give psychic readings and live sessions. The exhibition will be on view from October 31, 2019 to December 7, 2019 at the Eric Buterbaugh Gallery.
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