‘The inexpressible is contained—inexpressibly!—in the expressed.”

–Ludwig Wittgenstein 

Sea View is pleased to present The Inexpressible is Contained, a two-person exhibition of new works by Charlotte Edey (b.1992, Manchester, UK) and Azadeh Elmizadeh (b. 1987, Tehran, IR). For their Los Angeles debut, artists Edey and Elmizadeh explore selfhood by disembodying their subjects, examining instead the shifting historical, spiritual and environmental realms that shape and inform their layered identities. Rather than pursuing gendered forms or figures, both artists opt for intangible spaces and mutable forms, such as water, fire, earth and air suggest notions of porosity and luminosity – as well as containment and darkness. 

Charlotte Edey’s ethereal works move between intricate soft pastel drawings on paper and weavings that incorporate satin-stitch embroidery and beadwork. Often sewing freshwater pearls and glass beads by hand throughout her pieces, Edey’s exacting materials emulate the faintest glow of moonlight or the flicker of a water’s edge. Light and shadow function as psychological and narrative metaphors for the unknowable and certain and the internal and external. Interiors and rooms evolve into emotive structures, reflecting on the architecture of the human body as it reconciles with its outer environment.

Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphosis and hydrofeminist texts that combine feminist, queer, and ecological thinking, Edey emphasizes the inseparable relationship between the female body and bodies of water by weaving aquatic imagery through her interiors. In works such as “Breathwork,” the floor doubles as an expansive lake, glistening with strewn opalescent beads. In “Dollshouse,” the windows of a room start to resemble heavy-lidded eyes, with billowing curtains that run like tears. By encasing these drawings and weavings in found frames – some that date as far back as the Edwardian period – Edey presents a terraria of dreamlike worlds that play between the domestic and metaphysical.

Azadeh Elmizadeh’s newest body of work investigates the ancient, archaic, and mythical landscapes that shape her subjects. Interested in the elemental aspects of myth, namely water and soil, Elmizadeh draws from illuminated manuscripts and visual allegories that date back to around 1000 CE, where the mystic appearance of water signifies human knowledge and growth. 

Elmizadeh’s studio practice is rooted in the slow process of layering translucent glazes of oil paint to build anticipation and temporal uncertainty, directing itself toward the dynamics of becoming. Her skillful brushwork oscillates between gaseous swaths of color and luminous fractals of form that clarify into birds, figures, or vessels only from a distance. This dance between Eastern and Western influences moves Elmizadeh’s work beyond the wider sphere of Islamic literary and visual arts and emphasizes the extensive and permeable presence of Persian traditions cross-culturally and artistically. 

Through their interplay of color and shadow, sun and moon, land and water, Charlotte Edey and Azadeh Elmizadeh attempt to grasp the inexpressible plurality of their diasporic experience, one that often occupies multiple spaces, bodies, and time periods simultaneously.

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