FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is proud to present On the edge of the abyss (make it sexy), the fifth gallery solo exhibition of New Orleans-based painter, sculptor, and multimedia artist Anastasia Pelias. The exhibition will be on view through 7 February 2026 with an opening reception on 3 January from 5 – 8 PM - in conjunction with the Arts District New Orleans’ monthly First Saturday Gallery Openings.

Pelias discusses the inspiration for her latest body of work . . .

Part of the title of this exhibition is borrowed from a line by Nikos Kazantzakis in Askitiki, The Saviours of God. “We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.” The work in On the edge of the
abyss (make it sexy) surprises me. My initial intention was for the paintings in this body of work to be dark, quiet and mysterious – moody and restrained. Instead the paintings formed a trajectory outside of me. They insisted on becoming dynamic and bright, full of color and energy, alive with their own momentum.

The paintings in this exhibition are an acknowledgment and perhaps a celebration of being alive – of breathing, of breath itself, of color and movement. They gesture toward dimensions beyond the one we know so well, hovering between the
sensual and the metaphysical, between staying and being released. The inception of the sculpture, She survived, but her heart broke into a thousand pieces and drifted out to sea, came from a terrifying brush with death while I was swimming in the Aegean Sea, with my daughter peering down from a mountain path, not knowing what was happening to me.

With its feminine animal form, a mermaid tail and head of a snake draped over a rock, the sculpture explores mortality, mythology, transformation, and the human will to survive. It speaks to the imperishable bond between mother and daughter, the omnipresence of ancestors and angels, and the choice that was mine to make in an impossible moment.

Anastasia Pelias was born in New Orleans, LA to a Greek immigrant mother and a first generation Greek-American father. She received her BFA from the Newcomb College of Tulane University in 1981, and her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1996. Pelias has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums nationwide, and has been featured in publications including Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, Artnet news, ArtDaily, Forbes, Pelican Bomb and New Orleans Art Review. Her work appears in the permanent collections at the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; the Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, and in private and public collections worldwide.

Pelias ’work has been featured in notable exhibitions including The Whole Drum Will Sound: Women in Southern Abstraction at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in 2018, and Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women in Louisiana at Newcomb Art Museum in 2019 and at the Ford Foundation Gallery in 2020. In 2018, Pelias was commissioned by the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX to to make a site-specific sculpture and painting installation. In 2020, Pelias was commissioned by the Domain Companies to create a 54 foot mural at the Odeon Building in New Orleans. In 2020 she was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Residency. Pelias was a selected artist in the Prospect.5 Triennial, 2021- 22, where she exhibited a site-specific multi sensory installation involving sculpture, a painted landscape, sound and scent.

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For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on Instagram (@FerraraShowmanGallery) via the hashtags: #AnastasiaPelias, #ArtsDistrictNewOrleans, and #FerraraShowmanGallery.