Lilah Slager Rose
DOOMSDAYERS
© Lilah Slager Rose.
A battle between codependency and obsolescence has always been present in the automobile industry, especially in places like Detroit and Los Angeles. The former is artist Lilah Rose’s home state, and the latter where she is based now. The investment into a vehicle is personal, often one of means, comfort, or status, never financial, and hardly envi- ronmental. For about five years, Rose has been transmuting her lifelong fascination with cars into soft, sculptural wall reliefs to tease out humans’ conflicted relationship with them. With names like Citroën Canyon and Corvetticus, her works are rendered plush, silky, and colorful and often look like quilts, com- forters, or mattresses embellished with stacked, piled, multiplying, or splitting car bodies.
The cartoony yet tailored figures are commentaries but also tributes, their sensual but tension-filled forms a nod to the classic, well-crafted cars of generations past. Other work by Rose depicts personal, fragmented dreamscapes reminiscent of architecture, memories, and nostalgia. When making the quilted, hand-dyed works, some come together quickly, while others test her patience. There is no formula, no reliable results. Not unlike the eventual, fossilized detritus of cars that can no longer run, her pieces aim to create an “endless time loop—a memory that exists forever.”
B. 1990, Rockford, MI
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
lilahslagerrose.com
@lilahslagerrose
WW82
Lilah Slager Rose, The Cars That Ate Los Angeles, 2023, Satin, muslin, fabric dye, foam, and wood. Courtesy of the artist, photo by R & Company.