“To speak to the core that creates and swallows, to speak not always to what’s shouting, but to what’s underneath asking for nothing. I am at the mouth of the cave. I am willing to crawl.” - Ada Limón

Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles is thrilled to present That Which We Fear, That Which We Love, the first solo presentation of Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo’s work in Los Angeles. Selected from a group of more than four hundred applicants who applied for the 2023 Los Angeles Open Call, Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo’s work is a testament to the strength and vitality of contemporary artists working today, not only in major art centers like Los Angeles and New York, but in other parts of the US like Memphis, Tennessee where Cornejo is currently based.

Cornejo’s work confronts us with a world both alien and familiar, scientific in appearance yet mythological in character. In the artist’s words “That Which We Fear, That Which We Love presents observations of human time from the perspective of serpentine figures from Latin American myth, dwelling within a liminal space at the center of the Earth.” Utilizing a range of traditional and non-traditional media to create drawings, sculptures, textiles, and installations, Cornejo explores the possibilities within hybridity as a way to respond to the “troubled present in the wake of humanity’s destructive path.” Cornejo’s work weaves a beautiful alternative vision of hybrid life; a vision that challenges the current inclination toward an Anthropocene view of the world, perhaps indicating a shift to what the artist calls a “chimeric future” enhanced by technology.

For the exhibition the artist has created a series of site specific mixed-media sculptural works and drawings laser-cut into mirror. The work draws on a rich range of found and repurposed materials that includes organic and geological artifacts that speak to the hybridity and alchemical transformation at the core of Cornejo’s work.

Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo is a Peruvian-American interdisciplinary artist based in Memphis, TN. Her work has been shown at The Mint Museum (NC), Duke University (NC), Crosstown Arts (TN), Field Projects (NY), and Antenna (LA), among others, and was most recently included in the statewide Tennessee Triennial. She has been awarded residencies at Crosstown Arts and the McColl Center, and received the Current Art Fund Grant (2021), Tennessee State Fellowship (2022), and was the finalist for the 2022 Southern Prize. She received her MFA in interdisciplinary studio from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her BA in Studio Art and English Literature from Davidson College.