The Shaman’s Bride Lifts Her Veil: Lezley Saar’s A Conjuring of Conjurors

at Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles (through 22 February)
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner

In the magical exhibition, A Conjuring of Conjurors, artist Lezley Saar herself becomes the master shaman as she explores the role of mysticism, spiritualism and religious rituals in the human quest for safety, survival and certainty. Known for her earlier works that examine those who dwell in the interstices of identity, Saar here creates fantastically invented narratives of soothsayers and seers who use amulets, bones and tinctures to fix what is broken, find what is lost, or cure all manner of maladies.

Theatrically staged, Saar creates grand, large-scale figures which, though mute and faceless, paradoxically evoke both Nick Cave’s sound suits and Sue Wong’s feathered and beaded gowns, and are accompanied by poetic wall text that read like short stories. One such figure, entitled Olphida, the abandoned bride, finds books in broken branches, sermons in stones, rituals in roots, and sagas in silent seas (2019), is a tantalizingly bereft monochromatic brew of vintage fabrics, laces, crocheted bags, and patinaed bottles. Like all of these tall, free-standing figures, they look glamorous until one comes closer and sees the remnants of cloth once beautiful but now tattered. Faceless Olphida, possibly deranged by sadness, has her head with its beige velutinous hair hanging down in sorrow. At her feet are broken bones, bleached coral and other detritus…