Day of the Dead

American artist Sylvia Ji’s haunting, seductive and psychedelically tinged portrayals of women offer a whole new slant on femininity, and blur the line between high- and lowbrow art. Her subjects are symbolic reflections of herself, and people she knows, or just nameless faces set in a landscape of fleeting and decaying beauty. The dominant influence in Sylvia’s work is La Calavera Catrina, the iconic skeleton dame of Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, and her macabre, yet glamorous, take on the Sugar Skull tradition.

This intermingles with gorgeously colourful images of exotic empresses, Native American tribeswomen, and Baroque beauties. This retrospective monograph offers a lavish overview of an artist who draws inspiration from life and death to create highly charged and darkly exotic work.

About the Author

Sylvia Ji was born in 1982, and raised in San Francisco, California. Ji graduated with distinction in 2005 from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco with a Bachelors degree in traditional illustration, and had her first ambitious and successful solo show while still in her last year of school. Ji's work has been featured in numerous gallery exhibitions worldwide, as well as Art Basel s Art Fair Now in Switzerland and Art From The New World at Bristol s City Museum & Art Gallery in the UK.

She has been profiled in publications such as "Juxtapoz," "Trace," and "Mesh" Magazine, and her painting Dona Dolorosa graced the cover of "LA Weekly." She lives in Los Angeles."