Sapar Contemporary Hosts First Solo Show by Kalmyk-American Artist Sasha Stiles

Sapar Contemporary is staging the gallery's first solo exhibition devoted to Sasha Stiles, a first-generation Kalmyk-American artist and poet. The presentation marks the gallery's initial showing of Stiles's work, which centers on poetry understood as a technology of inheritance. Stiles draws on Jangar, a Kalmyk-Mongolian epic several centuries old that has endured migration, persecution, deportation, and diaspora. Returning to this foundational narrative of her nomadic heritage, she examines how language, memory, and culture are transmitted across generations or lost to silence. Her practice spans voice, script, print, code, and generative systems, extending Jangar's living tradition through ancient modes of oral transmission, portable memory, and embodied knowledge. These methods, in her framing, open new ways of comprehending a world that is increasingly networked, mobile, and computational. The exhibition is a deeply personal inquiry for the artist, who is a first-generation Kalmyk-American. It is also the first time Sapar Contemporary has presented works by Stiles.