Erica Everage

Erica Everage (b. 1987) is an artist based in Los Angeles. With her paintings, Erica is interested in making the ancient contemporary and even turning the present into artifact. She (figuratively) excavates ancient “female” bodies, bringing them into the light of the present day, reexamining them, and interpreting them against the backdrop of today’s misogyny and gender discrimination. Symbols of women’s power—and perhaps a feminist iconography— emerge as pentimenti in her paintings. An underlying sense of being at the precipice of ecological and societal collapse motivates her more sculptural paintings’ existence as make believe future artifacts. She asks herself, “Upon what strange vestiges will future archaeologists happen when they excavate us in a thousand years? What do we seem to be worshipping? What of our trash will appear as treasure?” The rough and uneven textures of burlap, reclaimed wood, tree sap resin, and reclaimed, recycled foam underlayment serve as Erica’s substrates. Experimentation with material is central to Erica’s practice. She received an MFA from Otis College of Art & Design and a BA from Northwestern University. Her work has recently been exhibited at Hotel Figueroa, The Bolsky Gallery, and Reisig & Taylor Contemporary in Los Angeles.