Memories, Familial Secrets, and Generation Traumas in Deli Gallery's "Sub Rosa"

Deli Gallery is showing an exhibition of new work by Diana Sofia Lozano and Alina Perez titled Sub Rosa, as both artists deal with the intimacies of their own memories, familial secrets, and generational traumas. Lozano and Perez create an environment where plants and flowers carry mythology, words and symbols linger, memories and thoughts lapse, and the lines of reality are blurred. From Lozano’s sculptural interplay of object and skin, to Perez’s detailed renderings of thick facial hair and bruises of uncertain origin, the works presented in Sub Rosa hum with sentimentality and tenderness. As plant forms mimic the human body, vines climb throughout the gallery, and natural forms take on their own distinct psychological states, the viewer is exposed to an environment that is simultaneously terrestrial and surreal.

Drawing on her horticultural background (both her parents were botanists), Lozano’s hand-molded sculptures map cultural displacement onto fashion objects. The works, rich in color and texture, embody a personal fusing of accessorization culture and its natural parallels in the plant world, aiming to dissolve the fixed narratives of gender distinction.

Perez uses her drawings as a tool to navigate her past identities and experiences. Rendered with meticulous detail in lush pastel and charcoal, the drawings play with the dualities of touch and sexuality: the lines between caress and abuse, repression and expression.

Diana Lozano (b. 1992, Cali, Colombia) received her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2013. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She has shown at La Mama Galleria, Fisher Parrish Gallery and Company Gallery in New York, Casa Prado in Colombia, Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco and Open Space in Baltimore.

Alina Perez (b. 1995, Miami, Florida) received her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. She was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017, and has attended residencies at the OxBow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Her work was recently exhibited at Monya Rowe Gallery and Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York, NY. Perez is currently attending a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

Sub Rosa is co-organized with Cheyenne Julien.