Anna Sew Hoy
Inspired by the elemental forces at play in the Borrego Valley, Anna Sew Hoy developed Fast Fashion for a Fallow Land to be as playful as it is dramatic. She transformed several of Ricardo Breceda’s Sky Art sculptures by wrapping them in vibrant fuchsia satin, calling to mind the momentary visual intensity of a desert bloom.
The material brought these theatrically posed animal forms to life with motion and sound as it danced in the wind.
The bright color accentuated the fundamental shapes of the metal beasts while softening them, leaving a visual impression that will remain long after the month-long installation. The artist has described the gesture of wrapping at the heart of this project as “care, swaddling, abstracting, holding up, and highlighting.”
Anna Sew Hoy was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Bard College in 2009. Solo presentations of Sew Hoy’s work have been mounted at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; the MOCA Storefront, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Koenig & Clinton, New York; LAXART; Various Small Fires, Los Angeles; the San Jose Museum of Art; and the California Biennial 2008 at the Orange County Museum of Art.
Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. She was awarded a Creative Capital Grant for Visual Art in 2015 to support her public sculpture Psychic Body Grotto. She was awarded the California Community Foundation Grant for Emerging Artists in 2013, and the United States Artists Broad Fellowship in 2006. Sew Hoy’s largest public sculpture to date, Psychic Body Grotto opened at the Los Angeles State Historic Park in Spring 2017. In 2019, Sew Hoy was appointed to the faculty at the UCLA School of Art as Assistant Professor and Ceramics Area Head.
Anna Sew Hoy, Fast Fashion for a Fallow Land, 2020, site-specific installation commissioned by Under the Sun Foundation for the 2020 Candlewood ArtsFestival, Galleta Meadows, Borrego Springs, California. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Panic Studio LA.