Sosa Joseph: Like The River Flows
By Laura Heyrman
“For us, it all began with the river. It flowed through us every day, every moment.” – Sosa Joseph (Indian, b. 1971)
Sosa Joseph’s recent paintings are the subject of an exhibition which just opened at David Zwirner, New York, so I have put together a short survey of the artist’s career over the past 15 years. The artist was born in Parumala, a small island village on the Pampa River in Kerala state in southwestern India. She didn’t leave the area until she was 24 years old and much of her art is inspired by her memories of the region. By revisiting her life experiences, Joseph feels that she explores and builds on her artistic roots rather than simply indulging nostalgia. Some of the memories that the artist explores aren’t pleasant ones, as in the snake-bite incident depicted in The Viper in the Sugar Cane Field (2021) included in this slide show. The expressionist distortions of form and the pink auras around the figures detach the scene from reality, making it veer into nightmare. In contrast, The Ferryman and his Jaundiced Child (2019) and First pair of heels and the mongoose (2025) have a more fairy-tale mood. The exhibition at Zwirner is made up of works that continue Joseph’s exploration of the environment of her youth and the river’s capacity to elicit beauty and fear, excitement and loss.
“The river remains my teacher, philosopher, and inspiration. It taught me that flux is everything. Not flowing is death. No matter what obstacles lie in its way, the river always finds a way to flow—whether around, over, or by carving out a new course.” – Sosa Joseph
Eastern Orthodox Christianity had come to the Joseph’s island home in the early 20th century, followed not long after by Communism. As a result the community was an unusual blend of deeply felt Christianity and left wing politics. The artist’s father was an active member of the Communist Party who disdained religion while her grandmother was a devout Christian. Daily life was made up of Party marches and church processions against the background of wetlands, animals and birds, rice paddies, sugar cane fields, and swamps. Some of Joseph’s unexpectedly happy memories from her childhood are the seasonal floods. The low-lying river delta saw about six months of rainy season every year, forcing the people from their homes. The children, unaware of the dangers, enjoyed a holiday atmosphere of communal living and constant play. All of these experiences find their way into the artist’s paintings, while the works in the current Zwirner exhibition focus on the flood season.
“I come from a rain-drenched riverbank. Apart from the river, which always flowed by, the phenomenon that governed our being was the rain. Its presence or absence did not merely mark the seasons—it shaped the very fabric of our consciousness.” – Sosa Joseph
The artist’s technique involves spreading paint on the canvas and pushing it around, scraping it off, adding new layers, resulting in a watercolor effect upon which Joseph builds her compositions. Her process is what leads the paintings to hover between solidity and fluidity, adding the sense that we are viewing memories or dreamscapes. Joseph’s early works were characterized by somber color schemes, but recent works are more vibrantly colored. The artist thinks of herself as “playing by ear” with color; she deliberately resisted learning any kind of color theory, preferring to create new tones, nameless colors she has produced instinctively.
“… painting is something I do to let go, setting myself completely free, abandoning myself to the anarchy of instincts.” – Sosa Joseph
Joseph describes herself as a careful and cautious person except when she is painting. Though she sometimes paints to work through worries or problems but considers the visual aspects of her work to dominate the subject matter. Though her works are often described as ethereal or delicate, the artist describes it as a natural mode of expression for her. The painter’s improvisational technique is not only apparent in the backgrounds of her paintings but also in the loose irregular contour lines and distorted proportions of the objects and figures she depicts. Joseph’s paintings are descended from 20th century Expressionism in their individualistic abstract style and highly personal subjects.
“I paint spontaneously, like the rain falls, the wind blows, or the river flows.” – Sosa Joseph
Current exhibition:
Sosa Joseph: Rain over the river through December 20, 2025 at David Zwirner, 34 East 69th Street, New York, New York, USA. davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2025/sosa-joseph-rain-over-the-river
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