Exhibit & Art Talk: Penitent

Exhibit & Art Talk

PENITENT

Saturday, July 11th | 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Artist-in-residence Camilla Taylor focused their residency on a series of drawings referring to the myth of St. Mary of Egypt. She is depicted covered in her own hair after decades of an ascetic life wandering through the desert. Presumably, even her clothes disintegrated. Rather than decades, Taylor lost nearly everything in mere moments. All their artwork and possessions at their Altadena home and studio were destroyed in the Eaton Fire of 2025. They recently curated the group exhibit My House Burned Down at the Track 16 Gallery in Downtown LA, which closed in June, 2025, and in a solo exhibition and catalog at Track 16 Gallery in East Hollywood, Unkindness, that dealt with themes of atheist mysticism, which closed in January 2026.

“This loss and displacement changed the way I make art,” Taylor says, “My work became more fragile and more precious.” However, hair is a theme they’ve used often as a motif in their work. It is a symbol of the body and a material that is both deeply corporeal and also has near magical qualities in many cultures, controlled in how it’s cut and worn and revealed. Taylor references hair also as a symbol of femininity, and their own ambivalence towards it. This will be explored in drawings, prints, and sculptures referring back to the myth of St. Mary of Egypt, and the larger corporeal and quasi magical qualities that hair represents.