Lilia Ana
To Remain Awake
October 10, 2025–November 9 2025
Reception: Friday October 10, 6–9pm
The other night I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling a crushing sensation in my chest; in my dream, everything collapsed and objects went flying.
This morning, I’m staring at a piece mirroring my subconscious; this woman succumbed to daily items. Lilia Ana’s exhibition “To Remain Awake” construes an internal world that has its toe over the line of external submission.
It’s hard to reconcile anything, prompting us to reflect inward. My brain spoons my body in an attempt for revelation to seek refuge. I tug at my eyelids trying to atone before I can make peace with this internalized scrimmage.
There’s this retractable knife I keep in my pocket, sometimes hoping it protrudes and slices into me, while also praying it doesn’t. Self-preservation looks different in many ways. Ana describes this sentiment of ‘quiet restraint’, while also explaining that these works beckon attention rather than surrender to circumstance.
All women remember their first time wearing ‘big girl shoes,’ how I put it, and staring back at bleeding ankles and toes that pour into the soles we’re treading. It’s all ridiculous, maybe obscene.
When I opened my eyes this morning, I did so slowly. I wanted to stay in a dream and basked in the darkness behind my eyelids. My introspection gave way to admission of the unchangeable, the unmovable, but also internal movement like a current or a riptide.
—Cassidy Dekle, October 2025.