The Philosophical Research Society is pleased to present
MYTH of DESCENT
curated by dama
November 14, 2025 - January 10, 2026
Myth of Descent takes its name from the ancient Sumerian story of Queen Inanna, the Mesopotamian goddess of Heaven and Earth, whose passage into the Underworld marks one of the earliest recorded myths of transformation. Summoned on a journey that tests the boundaries of power, identity, and mortality, Inanna descends through seven gates—each one demanding a sacrifice, each one bringing her closer to the essence of her being.
This exhibition draws from that mythic structure to explore the cyclical processes of descent and renewal, destruction and creation, that define both personal and collective evolution. Inanna’s journey is not only a tale of death and resurrection, but also an allegory for the inner metamorphosis that occurs when we confront what has been hidden—our shadows, our losses, our discarded selves.
In the descent, we are stripped bare. What we once held sacred dissolves. Yet in this unraveling lies the possibility of reformation, of crafting new stories and new forms of power from the fragments of the old. Emerging from the depths, we, like Inanna, return not unscathed but transformed: aware of our fragility, anchored in our strength, and luminous in our understanding that rebirth is not a return to what was, but the becoming of what is yet to be.
“My name is Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Please let me in. I have come to see what I have not yet seen, to experience what I’ve not yet experienced, and to learn what I do not yet know.”
FEATURING THE WORKS OF:
Cheri Gaulke, Eva Malhotra, Natalia Pereira, Rachelle Mozman Solano and Sarana Mehra.
This exhibition draws from that mythic structure to explore the cyclical processes of descent and renewal, destruction and creation, that define both personal and collective evolution. Inanna’s journey is not only a tale of death and resurrection, but also an allegory for the inner metamorphosis that occurs when we confront what has been hidden—our shadows, our losses, our discarded selves.
In the descent, we are stripped bare. What we once held sacred dissolves. Yet in this unraveling lies the possibility of reformation, of crafting new stories and new forms of power from the fragments of the old. Emerging from the depths, we, like Inanna, return not unscathed but transformed: aware of our fragility, anchored in our strength, and luminous in our understanding that rebirth is not a return to what was, but the becoming of what is yet to be.
“My name is Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Please let me in. I have come to see what I have not yet seen, to experience what I’ve not yet experienced, and to learn what I do not yet know.”
FEATURING THE WORKS OF:
Cheri Gaulke, Eva Malhotra, Natalia Pereira, Rachelle Mozman Solano and Sarana Mehra.
ARTISTS BIOS
Cheri Gaulke is a pioneer in the feminist art movement associated with the Woman’s Building in 1970s Los Angeles. She is known for her performance art, public art commissions, and award-winning films which have screened in national and international film festivals. Gaulke’s work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), in a Smithsonian-touring exhibition, and in settings all over the world including buses, churches, and prehistoric temples. Gaulke has received artist fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, City of Los Angeles, California Community Foundation, and California Humanities. Gaulke is currently in post-production on Acting Like Women, a feature documentary about feminist performance art and the Woman’s Building in 1970s-80s Los Angeles.
Eva Malhotra is a Plastic artist whose work includes encaustic and carved work, oil painting, installations, performance, and photography. The artist revived her education at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, UCLA School of Letters and Science, Department of Spanish Literature and Linguistics where she was awarded a Bacherlor in Arts degree, and the Schools of Law at UCLA and Boalt Hall/UC Berkeley - earning a Juris Doctor’s degree.
Malhotra’s art has been exhibited extensively in the U.S. and Mexico - both in solo and group shows, including the Armory Art Fair in NYC, the LA Art Show, UNAM LA, CECUT Tijuana, IMAC Puebla, IMAC Tijuana, Casa de la Cultura Los Angeles, Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, and many others.
Natalia Pereira, also known as AD105, is a Brazilian-American artist, author, and award-winning chef originally from Vianopolis, Brazil. Her multidisciplinary work is rooted in childhood memories and nature – includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures made with natural materials like yucca, dried flowers, and earth pigments.
Pereira’s art has been exhibited internationally, including at MOCA in Los Angeles and solo shows across the U.S., Europe, and South America. She is also the author of Abundancia: My Life in Recipes (2021), a book blending food, stories, poetry, and visual art.
As head chef of Woodspoon in downtown Los Angeles, she’s received a Michelin Bib Gourmand and was a James Beard finalist for “Best Chef in California” in 2022. Pereira lives and works in Los Angeles.
Rachelle Mozman Solano is a Brooklyn- and Panamá-based artist whose work explores the psychic, historical, and emotional inheritances of the Americas. Informed by her clinical practice in psychoanalysis, she uses film and photography to probe themes of mythology, migration, and intergenerational memory—often centering stories from her maternal lineage in Panamá.
Her recent projects include Birth of a Psyche, Venas Abiertas, and All These Things I Carry With Me, experimental works that confront U.S. policy, biblical myth, and the immigrant experience. Solano is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow and 2025 NYFA/NYSCA awardee. She has exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, Crystal Bridges, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, among others.
Sarana Mehra is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of language, technology, medicine, and belief. As a disabled person whose survival has depended on experimental medical interventions, she draws from personal experience to investigate the cyclical nature of human progress and the history of medical science.
Her practice engages with "future relics"—objects that merge contemporary symbols with ancient mythologies, drawing attention to how meaning persists or erodes over time.
Born in London to an English mother and South Asian immigrant father, Mehra is a biracial British-American artist living in Los Angeles. She is a co-founder and Media Director of Artists 4 Democracy, and a member of the Binder of Women collective. She holds a BFA from Oxford and an MFA from Central Saint Martins.
Eva Malhotra is a Plastic artist whose work includes encaustic and carved work, oil painting, installations, performance, and photography. The artist revived her education at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, UCLA School of Letters and Science, Department of Spanish Literature and Linguistics where she was awarded a Bacherlor in Arts degree, and the Schools of Law at UCLA and Boalt Hall/UC Berkeley - earning a Juris Doctor’s degree.
Malhotra’s art has been exhibited extensively in the U.S. and Mexico - both in solo and group shows, including the Armory Art Fair in NYC, the LA Art Show, UNAM LA, CECUT Tijuana, IMAC Puebla, IMAC Tijuana, Casa de la Cultura Los Angeles, Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, and many others.
Natalia Pereira, also known as AD105, is a Brazilian-American artist, author, and award-winning chef originally from Vianopolis, Brazil. Her multidisciplinary work is rooted in childhood memories and nature – includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures made with natural materials like yucca, dried flowers, and earth pigments.
Pereira’s art has been exhibited internationally, including at MOCA in Los Angeles and solo shows across the U.S., Europe, and South America. She is also the author of Abundancia: My Life in Recipes (2021), a book blending food, stories, poetry, and visual art.
As head chef of Woodspoon in downtown Los Angeles, she’s received a Michelin Bib Gourmand and was a James Beard finalist for “Best Chef in California” in 2022. Pereira lives and works in Los Angeles.
Rachelle Mozman Solano is a Brooklyn- and Panamá-based artist whose work explores the psychic, historical, and emotional inheritances of the Americas. Informed by her clinical practice in psychoanalysis, she uses film and photography to probe themes of mythology, migration, and intergenerational memory—often centering stories from her maternal lineage in Panamá.
Her recent projects include Birth of a Psyche, Venas Abiertas, and All These Things I Carry With Me, experimental works that confront U.S. policy, biblical myth, and the immigrant experience. Solano is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow and 2025 NYFA/NYSCA awardee. She has exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, Crystal Bridges, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, among others.
Sarana Mehra is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of language, technology, medicine, and belief. As a disabled person whose survival has depended on experimental medical interventions, she draws from personal experience to investigate the cyclical nature of human progress and the history of medical science.
Her practice engages with "future relics"—objects that merge contemporary symbols with ancient mythologies, drawing attention to how meaning persists or erodes over time.
Born in London to an English mother and South Asian immigrant father, Mehra is a biracial British-American artist living in Los Angeles. She is a co-founder and Media Director of Artists 4 Democracy, and a member of the Binder of Women collective. She holds a BFA from Oxford and an MFA from Central Saint Martins.
CURATOR
dama is a transdisciplinary artist, educator and curator whose work draws deeply from mythological, historical, and esoteric sources to challenge dominant narratives and reframe the role of women in cultural memory. Her ongoing curatorial and study project, the Surrealist Study Group, is hosted at the Philosophical Research Society (PRS) in Los Angeles — a historic site rooted in metaphysical inquiry. Through this project, she cultivates an experimental and feminist approach to curatorial practice, using surrealist methodologies to engage with women’s histories that have been obscured, fragmented, or mythologized. The Study Group operates as both a platform for research and a living archive, incorporating performance, collective study, and ritual-based practices. By invoking the mythology of the past, her collaborations with artists examine how knowledge is preserved, passed on, and reimagined by creating a space where the subconscious, the symbolic, and the scholarly meet.
SUPPORTING EVENTS:
OPENING RECEPTION: NOVEMBER 14, 2025 -- FRIDAY 6-9PM
SURREALISM AND ANTI-FASCISM SYMPOSIUM: DECEMBER 6, 2025 -- SATURDAY 2-6PM
ARTISTS TALK: DECEMBER 12, 2025 -- FRIDAY 7PM IN THE LIBRARY
CURATOR'S WALKTHROUGH: JANUARY 2, 2026 -- FRIDAY 7PM
CLOSING RECEPTION: JANUARY 10, 2026 -- SATURDAY 2-5PM
OPENING RECEPTION: NOVEMBER 14, 2025 -- FRIDAY 6-9PM
SURREALISM AND ANTI-FASCISM SYMPOSIUM: DECEMBER 6, 2025 -- SATURDAY 2-6PM
ARTISTS TALK: DECEMBER 12, 2025 -- FRIDAY 7PM IN THE LIBRARY
CURATOR'S WALKTHROUGH: JANUARY 2, 2026 -- FRIDAY 7PM
CLOSING RECEPTION: JANUARY 10, 2026 -- SATURDAY 2-5PM
Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.
Visit www.prs.org to view current event listings, course offerings, shop the online bookstore,
and sign up for email announcements.
Visit www.prs.org to view current event listings, course offerings, shop the online bookstore,
and sign up for email announcements.
