Alake Shilling

Alake Shilling was in residence at LUMA Arles in december 2022.

Alake Shilling (b. 1993) is a painter and sculptor based in Los Angeles who creates characters stemming from the artist’s childhood obsession with Lisa Frank and the aesthetic of after-school craft, making the viewer become what she calls “an accessory of comfort.” However, unlike the works of Lisa Frank, Shilling’s painted characters depart from perfection. Imagine if you will, Lisa Frank illustrated with candid empathy. Shilling notes “There is a dialogue between me and each character. The characters are more of an emotion. They embody a feeling.” Shilling takes additional influence from the natural world, collecting images of flowers, many of which are translated into her own visual vocabulary. She listens to Disco as her music of choice, drawing from glittering Disco album covers for inspiration, which appear in surprising moments of texture in her paintings. Shilling’s characters ultimately realize her childhood dream of creating her own visual lexicon of cute animals and plush creatures that were made to soothe and comfort, yet in her world embody the human condition in all its imperfections.