Tau Lewis' first exhibition at Sadie Coles presents four sculptural masks that each embody a segment of Venus's retrograde.
In her first solo exhibition at Bury Street, Tau Lewis presents four sculptural masks that gather like stanzas in a celestial poem—each embodying a chapter in Venus’s retrograde odyssey. These masked harbingers, messengers between realms, stand as serene yet potent entities, channeling the introspective energy of Venus’s cosmic retreat. Like the planet—which vanishes as the morning star only to reemerge as the evening star—Lewis’s works trace Inanna’s mythic descent into the underworld, mapping the transformative arc of loss, rebirth, and revelation. Each effigy materializes a fragment of the goddess’s journey: the wrenching choice to depart, the abyss of dissolution, the catharsis of surrender, and the quietude of return. Through them, Lewis conjures a meditation on grief, shadow selves, and the tender alchemy of inner-child healing, framing vulnerability as a portal to reinvention.
Here, the artist embraces a newfound playfulness in her mask-making, trading rigid control for intuitive experimentation. Working on an intimate scale, she begins with organic dyes—beetroot crimsons, turmeric golds, rust-stamped textiles—then surrenders to the tactile alchemy of repurposed leather, scattered beads, and remnants from past projects. These labor-intensive assemblages, vibrant yet weathered, mirror the cyclical renewal of retrograde itself: discarded fragments become relics, weaving personal and collective mythologies into textured talismans.
“The ways of the underworld are perfect”—the mantra whispered to Inanna—echoes through Lewis’s process, a lodestar for these bodiless guardians. More than objects, they are landscapes in miniature, their humanoid features emerging from undulating layers of memory and material. “There is a raw magnetic charge to the chaos,” she observes, honoring the dissonance of transformation. Unmoored from physical form, the masks hover between astral, psychological, and ancestral realms, inviting us to linger in the liminal.
Tau Lewis (b. 1993, Toronto; lives in New York) has exhibited internationally, with recent solo presentations at ICA Boston (2024), The Polygon Gallery, Vancouver (2024), and the National Gallery of Canada (2021). Her work has been featured in the Venice Biennale (2022), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2024), and Barbican Centre London (2024), among others, and resides in permanent collections at SFMOMA, The Met, and the Hammer Museum. Forthcoming projects include Performa Biennial (2025) and exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Brandts (2026) and Tramway, Glasgow (2027).