Assata Mason

Assata Mason paints myth not as fantasy, but as mirror. Born in Chicago in 2000, Mason creates intimate allegories that use classical references to stage internal dramas — where femininity, rage, and transformation collide. In Dissension, her new painting for Fable & Form, Mason depicts herself not once but twice: as twin Medusas in dispute. The work is small in scale but immense in psychic tension, channeling the unresolved charge of being both subject and symbol, victim and villain, divine and defiant. With Medusa, she chooses a mythic archetype historically flattened into monstrosity — and reanimates it with nuance, vulnerability, and self-awareness.

“She paints myth as autobiography. The gorgon isn’t just a monster — she’s a portrait, a mirror, a wound, a split self reclaiming its power.”

Mason’s process is grounded in self-reflection, ritual, and the symbolic language of the body. Working primarily in oil, she draws on art history, mythology, and personal memory to compose psychologically rich tableaux. Figures in her paintings are never neutral — they carry weight, gaze, consequence. Hair becomes a portal; drapery conceals and reveals; setting becomes theater. Her work insists that the mythic is not ancient, but ongoing — that the stories we inherit are also stories we live, challenge, and rewrite.

“I wanted to see what happens when two Medusas face each other. Is it destruction? Recognition? A reckoning? The answer is: yes.”

 In Dissension, Mason stages a personal mythology in classical form. One Medusa approaches barefoot, her face twisted in pain and fury, serpentine locks in riotous bloom. The other — poised atop a throne, partially veiled — points in confrontation, her gaze hidden but potent. The fallen goblet, cracked amphorae, and rising columns suggest ritual, rupture, and consequence. At 9 x 8 inches, the painting demands close looking, drawing the viewer into a moment of emotional combustion that doubles as a self-portrait in split identities. Here, dissension becomes generative — a reckoning with how one sees oneself, and how one survives being seen.

Following Fable & Form, Mason will debut her first solo exhibition with Sabbatikal this fall. Continuing her exploration of self-mythology, doubling, and feminine power, the exhibition will expand her symbolic lexicon into new scenes of psychological intimacy and ritual tension.

Follow Assata:Website | Instagram