To Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth

'To Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth'  was a phrase my parents would say whenever something was out of my control and didn’t go exactly according to plan. It feels to me like a short phrase that embodies the entire human struggle, like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. It feels like suffering and resilience on a scale that goes beyond one lifetime. If we are being reborn, we are living out a grand narrative of desiring, striving, stumbling, soaring, tumbling, grieving, learning, dying, and starting over, over and over again. With enough time, even in one life we can go through all of these experiences, which end up transforming us.” – Shyama Golden

 

'To Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth' centres around stories of past lives. It challenges the idea of an essential self, a fixed history, and linear progress. Its tone of irreverence, melancholy, absurdity and spirituality align with what Shyama senses is the collective mood in Los Angeles. The stories are loosely based on her own metaphorical past lives, or identities she’s inhabited based on a place or occupation that are now a part of her narrative. The past lives depicted are all set within class-based societies, where one’s occupation plays a larger role in shaping identity. The identity of each place is also constantly changing, and without culture to name, categorize, or assign value, each identity cannot exist. In these paintings, cycles of birth and death, regeneration and decay play out in different ways, against their respective backdrops.