Path of Exile: Poor joys Asylum I

By working on the reverse side of panels - and hanging each work’s intended face to the wall, Wright has traditionally attempted to create a structure on which she can reveal an inverse or hidden story. In her earlier works for instance, abject or remaindered beings were expressed through loose portrait busts, speaking of secret or neglected histories in both industry and the history of art.

Wright presents a collection of anthropomorphic protagonists composed within a psychological tableaux. The dark panels have been given a faux provenance reminiscent of gothic antique patina, onto which multiple layers of oil paint have been used as a way to summon essence. Themes of female power and subjugation are then explored through magical thinking, superstition, and alchemical processes that are wrought out through compositional arrangements. The pretext of witchcraft that was seized upon historically in order to control women in society, finds form through various circles, triangles, or sigil-like entities in her paintings. Her rendering of imagery associated with the likes of Malevich or Mondrian - are expressed in order for her to be able to domesticate certain Modernist practices. Such an approach draws light on historic constraints placed upon female creativity, allowing her paintings to be seen as pathologies of what the imagination does when it is confined.