She Who Holds the Sun - Opening Reception
969 Chung King Rd
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present She Who Holds the Sun, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles artist Mary Anna Pomonis. Pomonis combines sacred geometry with feminist iconography to create visual systems that hold, transmit, and protect energy. Her crisp geometric abstractions on shaped canvas meld ideas from mathematics, feminist theory, spirituality, and history in paintings that are both objects and thresholds. The title of the exhibition reimagines the title of Shelley Parker-Chan’s 2021 novel She Who Became the Sun, a historical epic that follows its main character in pursuit of self-obliterating greatness. Pomonis flips this pursuit, instead describing a female artist who, rather than becoming the thing she creates, holds it for a time and lets it go, like a mother releasing her child. This fundamental act of creation and release also describes the process by which these paintings came to be: each one reimagines a painting lost in the devastating Eaton Fire that ripped through Altadena in January 2025, resulting in a transformational body of work that turns loss into spiritual and creative growth.
