Alison Saar

LOS ANGELES — The artist Alison Saar set a goal for herself long ago: to clearly communicate her ideas and emotions through the power of form. Her sculptures have their own personal vocabulary that speaks in a direct language about history, race, and mythology. If her sculptures are the melodies that capture one’s soul, the narratives behind them are the lyrics.

When we first meet Topsy in the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the enslaved young girl grins, "goblin-like," and repeatedly professes her wickedness. She embodies blackness to her young mistress Eva's whiteness; she plays devil to Eva's saint, base earth to Eva's ethereal spirit. She comes into the St. Clare family as a civilizing project, a heathen to be educated, tamed, Christianized.

L.A. Louver is hosting Alison Saar’s "Topsy Turvy” at its Los Angeles venue.

An exhibition of new works by the Los Angeles-based artist takes inspiration from the character of Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic Civil War-era novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Saar re-contextualizes the sprightly uncouth slave girl as a symbol of defiance, through paintings on dyed vintage linens and sculptures carved from wood.