Rough Ways of the Delicate Ones marks the second solo exhibition with Sebastian Gladstone Gallery by Los Angeles-based artist Emmanuel Louisnord Desir. Featuring eight new works, the exhibition continues Desir’s exploration of metamorphosis, endurance, and reclamation. Across these works, bodies and belief systems shift under pressures accumulated across time and generations.

The exhibition takes its title from Baruch 4:26: “My delicate ones have gone rough ways, and were taken away as a flock caught by the enemies.” Desir considers delicacy not as weakness, but as a capacity for care, love, and righteousness—qualities made vulnerable by conditions that harden, corrupt, or lead one astray. His figures appear accordingly converted: amalgamations of bodies, creatures, machines, and symbols at once armored and exposed, guarded and reaching outward.

Evolving from his Born to Win presentation, where Desir investigated ancient systems and legacies of resistance, Rough Ways of the Delicate…