The Moon Dancers, Angelo Vasta and SiSi Chen at Tappeto Volante Gallery

Opening Reception: December 10th, 2024, 6 to 8 PM
On view until January 19th, 2025

Tappeto Volante Projects is proud to present The Moon Dancers, a two-person exhibition featuring ceramics by SiSi Chen and works on paper by Angelo Vasta. Both Brooklyn-based artists explore the nuances of their dual cultural heritage—Chen’s Chinese and Vasta’s Italian—through contemporary practices that reinterpret memory, tradition, and identity. This exhibition invites viewers into a rich dialogue on myth, transformation, and the deeply personal narratives that connect the past to the present.

SiSi Chen’s ceramics are rooted in the storytelling traditions of myth and folklore, where cultural symbols are transformed into vessels that examine resilience, balance, and belonging. Central to her work are the Moon Rabbit, a figure of immortality, and Guardian Lions, protectors of energy and harmony. Chen reimagines these motifs through modular, geometric forms that serve as literal and metaphorical thresholds, reflecting the fluidity of identity in a globalized world.

Her practice further reclaims and reframes narratives of historically maligned feminine figures, such as Huli Jing, the fox spirit, or the Greek sirens, traditionally cast as destructive forces. Through Chen’s vision, these figures emerge as powerful symbols of agency and empowerment. Her intricately painted hexagonal vessels, each face bearing a unique story, merge ancient mythology with contemporary storytelling, inviting tactile engagement and connection.

The Guardian Lions series explores the duality of these iconic protectors: the male safeguarding material spaces and the female guarding spiritual realms. Through their symbolic forms, Chen examines themes of convergence and balance, drawing on the hexagon’s significance in Chinese culture as a symbol of harmony between heaven, earth, and the four winds. Layers of imagery—tarot cards, constellations, moon cycles, koi fish, dual tigers, and mythical rabbits—animate her hand-built vessels, creating a dynamic interplay of structure, movement, and transformation.

Angelo Vasta’s works on paper delve into the intimate and the personal, exploring self-representation and connection. His drawings capture moments of domestic quietude and tenderness rendered in vivid Mediterranean hues. While autobiographical, Vasta’s works transcend specificity, becoming universal meditations on vulnerability, belonging, and the subtle resonance of the everyday. Vasta’s works on paper embody a deep connection to movement, light, and the textures of life, rooted in his Italian heritage and lifelong passion for dance. Trained as a dance filmmaker, self-taught artist Angelo Vasta brings a cinematographer’s eye to his visual art, capturing fleeting moments of motion and emotion with a delicate yet dynamic touch. His figures seem to dance across the surface of his compositions, stepping into a world where motion is eternal, and memory is alive.

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Thursday to Sunday from 1 to 6 PM