Savdie grew up between Barranquilla, Colombia, and Miami, Florida. Her work is inspired by her childhood in Colombia, both for its systemic inequities of gender, race, and class and also for her memories of the annual Carnaval de Barranquilla. Savdie found a deep appreciation for the carnival character of Marimonda, a masked figure that mocks the so-called elite. Marimonda reminded the artist of today’s political climate in America, where there has been attack after attack on various groups of marginalized people. As a queer woman of color, Savdie, in effect, takes on the role of Marimonda by documenting the large systems of oppression her work responds to, but by exhibiting this work, she also reclaims her own position of power.
In Savdie’s world, beautiful bodies melt into one another while inorganic forms take cover in the details. In Baths of Synovia (2023), figures and skeletons grip and pull on one another as they float in a blue abyss. At the top, a figure with pink and purple skin-like folds and small multi-colored hands or claws lurks above, perhaps taking in the spectacle or waiting to strike its prey. The work, as the wall text explains (in both English and Spanish), is inspired by an etching by Francisco de Goya, Aguarda que te unten (Wait Till You’ve Been Anointed) from 1799, of a goblin and one-eyed woman who, together, hold down a billy goat that is attempting to fly. In Goya’s version, the figures cover the animal with some sort of gel or ointment, suggesting that the goat was previously a human and has undergone a transformation.