ILY2 is proud to announce Shad Mode, an exhibition of recent work by New York-based artist and researcher Sasha Fishman. The show is a continuation of her interest in biomaterials, toxicology, and energy harvesting as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting. Driven by a fascination bordering on fixation with fish as both subject and object, Fishman’s practice prods the relationship between fish, their ecosystem, and their caretakers, asking the question: How do humans direct the evolution of a species, and how does a species exist beyond itself?
Fishman has been an ILY2 Artist in Residence for the summer of 2025, with the exhibition Shad Mode as the current culmination of her working research in the Northwest region. Shad Mode will be on view at ILY2 from September 20 through December 20, 2025, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 20 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM
Often described as “living fossils,” lamprey and sturgeon exist in a liminal space as markers of the past in an ever-changing present. Fishman reflects on this temporal ambiguity by making the gallery a site of collapse, merging media and mediums to present the tenuous lineage of these species with modern mechanisms of control, and experiments in preserving them after death.
Born out of three months of research in the Pacific Northwest, immersing herself in the varying practices of the Army Corps-run Bonneville Lock and Dam, and the tribal run hatcheries of the Yakama Nation, Fishman uses the complicated history of lamprey and sturgeon de-population, restoration, and education as a point of entrance.
Sculptural components mimic the architectural vernacular of information guides, replacing dated educational language with the tautly stretched skin of sturgeon, a tongue-in-cheek nod at how ecological information is presented in soft, digestible ways that create distance between human and animal. Encircling the exhibition is a fish cannon, a modern method of transporting species over the dams that have altered their million-year-old movements. Ceramic wall works mirror the skeletal structure of sturgeon (or, in the case of lamprey, allude to their lack of one), while aluminum prints documenting Fishman’s research are future relics of our present ecological knowledge.
Shad Mode teases at the ephemeral nature of systems—those natural, and those fabricated. Underlying is an exploration of the indulgent desire to manipulate them, and the paradoxical necessity and futility of doing so in an inherently entropic world.
* * * * Sasha Fishman holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she collaborated with labs on salmon, fountains, and carbon capture materials, Fishman is a 2024 Puffins Grant recipient, a 2024/25 Artist in Residence at Smack Mellon. Fishman lives and works in New York, NY.
Fishman has exhibited her work at Murmurs (Los Angeles), Below Grand (New York), Resort (Maryland), Hesse Flatow (New York), Bozomag (Los Angeles), ILY2 (Portland), The Jewish Museum (New York), and The Indian Ceramics Triennale (New Delhi, India). She has participated in residencies at Smack Mellon (New York), Art Ichol (India), Acre (Wisconsin), NAHR (Italy) and the High Desert Observatory (California). Fishman has presented her work and run workshops at Printed Matter (New York), Genspace (New York), Navel (Los Angeles), Carnegie Mellon, UCLA (Los Angeles), UDenver (Colorado), UColorado Boulder (Colorado), Kenyon College (Ohio), MICA (Maryland), Caltech (California), and CSULB (California).
