Retna

Los Angeles based Retna, removes corporate advertisements of women from illuminated signs and embellishes them in a style that not only recalls Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs but even the aesthetic heights of Byzantium with its mosaic tiling of Christ and other deities. In one work, the well-known and ill-fated r’n’b singer, Aaliyah, gazes upwards while colour explodes like jewelled fragments around her. Retna’s intervention in these advertisements elevates the perception of the mostly anonymous females - fodder for representing desire and selling other objects - to a form of idolatry.