In this exhibition, Ivna explores ways to challenge the museum space, to claim her place, literally and figuratively. They are often poems that inspire Ivna and in which she finds meaning. Which approach the core of her work without explaining the work or providing it with an explicit message. This also allows the viewer to make their own interpretation of the work. The title of the exhibition comes from the poem The Ragged and the Beautiful by Jamaican poet and writer Safiya Sinclair.

Ivna creates large drawings on canvas, compositions of figures that explore the everyday life and world of black people and the black imagination. The figures are connected, sharing bodies, touching and holding each other as if their individual balance depends on their unity, solidarity, pleasure and love. Far from any outside judgement or coercion.

Her work arises intuitively. Following the lines on the canvas, exploring shape and intermediate form. Lines that  connect, present and past, personal stories and memories. These stories and memories wander through the universe, connecting present and past with what we see and feel.

Ivna Esajas has a studio in Amsterdam Zuidoost, at the Open Ateliers Stichting (Kruitberg). She obtained her master's at the Sandberg Institute in the programme 'Blacker Blackness' (2023). She received the Mondriaan Fund 'Artist Start' grant in 2024.

Her work has previously been shown in a solo exhibition at Metro54 in Amsterdam (2024) and in various group exhibitions, including at CBK Zuidoost (2024), Kunstenlab (2023) and Open Ateliers Zuidoost (2023).