1206 Maple Ave LA, CA 90015 5th floor #523
Saturday, January 11 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Ends Mar 9, 2025
Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles (TSA LA) is delighted to present Between Walls, I Find My Voice, a debut solo exhibition by contemporary visual artist Marie-Josè.
The exhibition, which explores themes of home, displacement, and cultural memory through vibrant and intricate mixed-media paintings, will be on view from January 11 through March 9, 2025.
This poignant body of work draws inspiration from familial photographs, personal heritage, and the artist's Nigerian roots. Through a dynamic blend of acrylic paintings, stained glass, and mosaic, Marie-Josè’s works transcend static notions of home, presenting it instead as a fluid and emotionally resonant state of being. Each piece integrates details and materials—thread, glass, shells; lace, —that connect family members to specific times and places, reimagining these interior environments through surrealist elements like cloudscapes and abstract forms.
Between Walls, I Find My Voice serves as a cathartic tool - a love letter to the sacred spaces of the artist’s past that live on in memory and in heritage. The overall idea of ‘home’ as perceived by the artist, is a representation of peace, safety & sacred connection. Growing up in Western society, home is often idealized - most imagine a nuclear family in a cookie-cutter suburban construction, where parents remain until passing and the home - its location, characteristics, and the people in it - remain a constant in the forming of identity. Due to a variety of factors in the artist’s personal family history - civil war, generational trauma, rising effects of gentrification & economic instability - the reality of what it means to have a home and ‘feel’ at home is based more on the people within it rather than the walls that sum it up. Between Walls, I Find My Voice expresses a tangible thread of love and resilience that transcends and survives the passage of time and the crumbling of walls.
“Home is not just a physical space but a sanctuary shaped by the people within it,” says Marie-Josè. “This series is a tribute to the homes of my past - it also reflects the fluid reality shaped by historical trauma, gentrification, and familial and generational displacement.”