Sophia Narrett creates complex embroideries that express the power of intimacy and desire in the digital age. By casting figures sourced from the Internet into carefully embroidered scenes, she responds to a world of immediate, often treacherous media with an idiosyncratic fantasy. Through undulating embroidered surfaces, and edges that dissolve into loose threads or sculptural flora, Certain Magic tells a disconcerting narrative of modern longing that layers the surreal with the mundane. In the exhibition, chemistry, romance, and perhaps delusion, transform backyards and living rooms into sites for magic and escapism.
Narrett’s vignettes include exhibitionism, voyeurism, flirtation and play. Here, romance is transcendent, an escape from tragedy, isolation, and even boredom. Yet it is also tied to those moments when excitement borders on toxicity, or play bleeds into manipulation, and when the inherent danger of power exchange (real or imagined) comes to light.
ON VIEW: Through June 17, 2018