In Too Bad, So Sad, Maybe Next Birth, Shyama Golden presents surreal diptychs and a new AI-animated video installation that explore fate, identity, and reincarnation across imagined past lives.
Divided into four acts, the exhibition presents a sequence of imagined past lives, each represented through a pair of oil paintings: a large-scale scene and a close-up counterpart. These vignettes—spanning 19th-century Texas, 1930s Sri Lanka, 1970s Los Angeles, and present-day Mount Washington—trace the invisible forces of migration, labor, class, and cultural inheritance.
Shyama Golden’s work merges the mythical and autobiographical, embedding references to Kolam—a traditional Sri Lankan form of folk theatre—and the island’s legendary Yakas, supernatural beings often portrayed as demons or protective spirits.
A video installation, created in collaboration with Paul Trillo, uses an AI model trained to animate Golden’s paintings.
