Asha Elana Casey - "Traces Of My Spirit"

Held on January 8, 2022 between Asha Elana Casey and Alani Nelson AN: Thanks for taking the time to answer questions! Your time and insight is so appreciated. I wanted to start by asking how would you describe your approach to portraiture.

EC: When doing a portrait, if I’m painting myself for the orisha series, I do some research on that deity and try to pose in a manner similar to them. If I’m working on the godself body of work, I am choosing friends and family and I am asking them to imagine their godself. What colors do you gravitate towards, what symbology is important to you? And then I use the symbols prevalent in my work to hint at the spiritual. So I use rhinestones as a representation of soul/spirit inspired by a story in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men. I use mirror, gold, and silver as residue from my gold series and my exploration with my spiritual journey. The colors white, silver, the rhinestones, and glass are symbols that come from the work I’ve done with my own spirit.

I’m really drawn to this idea of kind of co-creating the god self with friends and family, how does that interplay of personal and external symbolism show up in some of the works?

I think we look at Mahari’s piece which is maybe the only godself piece in the show, she has a sequined snake in her work. Which Is really cool because it’s the first time I incorporated animals but I used the snake because it’s prevalent in her work as well And I was also looking at her use of greenery as well. So I felt that by borrowing some of her symbolism it would make the portrait feel the most like her, so then when we look at it again, we can see the use of rhinestones, glass, and glitter which have become signifiers of my work.

How did representing the god self become a part of your work? what sort of external factors led your practice here?

I think it started in undergrad. I am honestly an abstract artist. I just happen to be good at portraits and I felt underrepresented and undervalued during my undergrad experience. I immediately shifted gears from geometric abstract to Byzantine art inspired portraiture because it was important for my self-esteem 19