"Love Is the Secret" by India Evans
June 29 - July 22, 2023
373 Broadway, unit 219, NYC
Press Contact: Kourosh Mahboubian
km@mahboubianfineart.com
Daughter of the modern Lower East Side Literati Makes Her NYC Gallery Return
KAPOW is pleased to present “Love Is the Secret,” a solo exhibition by Italian multimedia artist,
yogi, doula, and native New Yorker India Evans. The artist’s first hometown show in six years —
and also her debut with KAPOW — offers nine rich new collages that expand on her practice’s
heartfelt tactility. Paired with painting on both canvas and paper, Evans’s amalgamations of
intense beauty, sometimes with a sheen of seduction, feature single-thread poetry by the artist
and Einstein alike all honoring the pure love of father-daughter relationships. Three large works
on canvas in “Love Is the Secret” were first initiated by her father, the late painter John Evans.
By the time India Evans was a toddler, Alice Neely had depicted her and her twin sister — such
was the life they lived growing up on the Lower East Side, taking the crosstown bus to school in
the West Village, enjoying daily family hugs and home cooked dinners with their ultra creative
parents. Evans went on to study in Rome, Italy, her family’s home country, imbuing her art with
the spirituality that raised her, emboldened by a devoted yoga practice, and later, motherhood.
Symbolism abounds across Evans’s artworks — mystical implications arise from the echoes of
moths, tantric embraces, and swelling seas. “I invite the viewer to look in-depth at the spiritual
dimensions within themselves, to reflect on the interconnectedness and cyclical rhythms of life,”
she says. “I hope my art inspires conversations about love in all its expressions, and about how
we are not helpless, but in fact have the power to create — we are all capable of adding light to
the world when it comes from a place of love, when we listen to our hearts [and] choose love.”
Sourcing her material from found vintage media, Evans punctuates dynamic scenes of acrylic
painting with fantastical cut and then reassembled characters. Here, reality is re-molded into
abstraction, sometimes surrealism, always something new. The viewer finds immediate riddles
with even a desultory regard, like a diving upside-down fish head in “Plenty of Fish in the Sea”
(2023) and a bejeweled bodhisattva in her sprawling, Bosch-like triptych “Mama Aya” (2023).
Amongst the show’s many mesmerizing works on paper, three larger artworks painted and
glued on canvas began 15 years ago, when Evans was back in NYC collaborating with her
father, who made a collage every single day for 40 years — in addition to his painting practice.
He kickstarted these pieces and now, a decade after his passing, Evans has at last finished
them with vibrant details and the show’s tender thread motif. She’s crowned “Love Is the Light
That Enlightens” (2023) with denser text than any other work on view, culled from a letter
between Einstein and his daughter where the physicist says that God is love. On a similar
intergenerational thread, Evans now understands how her own creativity benefits her son.
A portfolio book featuring 25 smaller collages of textiles and found media on paper provide the
artworks across this exhibition with more context. The show is also accompanied by a catalog
— featuring an essay from acclaimed New York Times writer and author John Straussbaugh.

India Evans (b. 1978) is a native New Yorker, born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her
training includes formidable academic work in Italy at the Lorenzo de' Medici Institute in
Florence and Accademia di Belle Arti in Perugia. After receiving a BFA in 2000 from American
University in Washington DC , India moved to Rome and lived there for five years. In Italy her
artwork was well received and was included in many exhibitions and art fairs. India returned to
New York in 2007 and her work has been shown in several prominent New York City galleries
such as Knoedler Gallery, Nohra Haime Gallery, Pavel Zoubok Gallery.“The Eye of the
Beholder" at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, NY and "The Visible Vagina" at the
Francis Naumann Gallery in New York City. Also at the Fred Gallery in London and the Na
Solyanke Gallery in Moscow.
KAPOW is a TriBeCa exhibition space established in 2022 as an independent division of
Kourosh Mahboubian Fine Art — operated by acclaimed art dealer, appraiser, and curator
Kourosh Mahboubian. KAPOW highlights and promotes the work of emerging to mid-career
artists who are on the verge of breaking through to a higher level of mainstream success
through the focused, bimonthly presentation of solo shows of those artists’ works in a setting
that allows us to interact intimately with the art and to question our own preconceptions.

The Art of India Evans “erotic energy is the ultimate creative force”


India Evans is a NYC born and raised mixed media artist who is best known for her intimate and poetic collages. Evans was educated at Scuola d’Arte Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, Italy and Accademia di Belle Arti in Perugia, Italy. In 2000 Evans received a BFA from The American University. Evans work has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide including Sala Uno Gallery in Rome, Italy, Na Solynanke Gallery in Moscow, Russia, Fred Gallery in London, UK, Knoedler Gallery in NY, the Kratzen Museum in Washington, DC, the Islip Art Museum in NY and the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, NY. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New York Sun, the NY Observer, Backstage,Time Out, Il Venerdi di Repubblica, Il Messaggero, Exhibart, The Paris Review and it was featured on R.A.I. TV. Between 2009 and 2013 Evans’ collages were projected on a scrim for the set of Dante’s Divina Commedia – Inferno (NY Fringe Festival, Prague Fringe Festival) and Oscar Wilde’s Salome (The Flea Theater). India Evans was included in the exhibition “The Devil’s House” at The Living Gallery Outpost, NYC October 2017, and can be seen at SCOPE art fair 2018.

DISINFO: Can you discuss the path you have walked to become the artist you are? Who were your inspirations and influences when you began your journey as an artists and what other artists have you discovered along the way?

INDIA EVANS : Being raised by two hippies one (my father) being an artist and the other (my mama) believing that having a life surrounded by art was important taught me so much but above all it taught me to go with the flow of life and to be ok in the uncertainty – that the universe has a safety net under me. Love was our religion. Meaning- imagination, compassion, happiness, creativity, gratitude, intuition and freedom were what mattered most.

An interview with Margaret Evans, painted by Neel in 1978