In 1957, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published a short handbook titled Manual de zoología fantástica (Book of Imaginary Beings). The original book contained eighty-two entries—short chapters that laid forth a bestiary of mythological creatures drawn from myth or literature. Instead of serving as a dry, scholarly tome that simply cited literature and history, Borges played fast and loose—combing through the writings of first-century gnostics and mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg one minute and embellishing other entries with his own imaginary details the next. The entire volume is shot through with Borges’ pithy observations and asides, making it breezy and bracingly modern.

Enter artist Sasha Feldman, who has spent much of his professional career on a parallel track with Borges, nursing similar obsessions with fantastical creatures, myths, mystics, conspiracy theories… and above all, how these things are experienced through a childhood lens. Borges was obsessed with childhood experience and framed Imaginary Beings by asking his readers to imagine a child being taken to the zoo for the first time. Even though a child has never seen a creature as odd as a giraffe, their experience is one of wonder rather than horror. 

Borges goes on to compare his fantastical zoo to a real one, implying that imagining fantastical creatures provides an equivalent dose of wonder while also stroking his chin about the role that these beings have played in our collective psyche throughout history. Sasha Feldman managed to escape art school with his sense of childhood wonder intact—no small feat in an era of crushing student debt and impossible expectations. Feldman has maintained his childhood penchant for blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality, along with an intuitive knack for diving obsessively into whatever rabbit hole that beckons. 

Sasha Feldman’s primary medium is ceramics, which has served as a vessel for human imagination since our ancestors began firing clay more than 30,000 years ago. From an early age, Feldman was captivated by the power that these figures held. The Jōmon era in Japan, which lasted from 14,000-400 BCE, yielded thousands of small ceramic figures called Dogū, which range from simple humanoid forms to baroque sculptures with more than a passing resemblance to contemporary space aliens. Look closely at Feldman’s new sculpture, Specimen #2 (2025), and you’ll see a direct reference to the goggle-like eyes on many Dogū. TERRORCOTTA! also winks at ancient Chinese tomb guardians, English and Mexican folk pottery, Andean vessels, and more.

TERRORCOTTA! Is Feldman’s personal Book of Imaginary Beings. Hanako (2024), the first sculpture in this series, grew out of Feldman’s fascination with the poster for a 1980s horror film called Street Trash (1987) that depicts a Francis Bacon-y figure gruesomely dissolving into a squalid toilet. There is a well-documented philosophical debate about the history of anxieties surrounding toilets. Ancient Romans had Cloacina, a goddess who protected Rome’s sewer system. As with many phenomena, it is the Japanese who took toilet spirits to another level. For centuries, the Japanese told of fertility figures related to the production of fertilizer from waste, as well as assorted water sprites associated with toilets and baths. The modern era has seen the emergence of Hanako, a ghost that can be summoned in girl’s bathrooms.

Feldman’s rendering of Hanako draws from contemporary horror and anime, depicting a schoolgirl with a distended tongue emerging from a stylized toilet. Hanako possesses details and a cultural backstory that is an order of magnitude more specific than any of Feldman’s previous sculptures, which led to the idea of building an idiosyncratic bestiary of his own… but with on major benefit for the artist. Like many of us, Feldman is a creature of his own anxieties, and he has found that by exploring fear and anxiety through his work, he can work through and release himself from them. Measuring close to two feet in height, Hanako also represents a leap in both scale and ambition for Feldman, who also began testing and layering his glazes in unconventional ways to better suit this new body of work.

Perhaps the most personal and impactful example in TERRORCOTTA! is Feldman’s retelling of the story of the Golem, which was also a lifelong obsession for Borges. The Golem reflects biblical creation myths, as the creature was fashioned like Adam from clay or mud by a religious figure like a Rabbi, who brings to life through a ritual incantation. The most popular version of the tale revolves around Rabbi Loew’s creation of the Golem in the sixteenth century to defend Prague’s Jews from antisemitic attacks. Borges’ writings focus on the Rabbi’s humanity as he realizes that he is as imperfect as the clay being that he has brought to life.

Golem (2024) must be seen in the context of the artist’s Jewish heritage and the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israel and the resulting devastation of Gaza. Feldman’s uniformed Golem holds an automatic weapon (a replica of a toy machine gun in the artist’s studio), ready to protect Israel’s Jews. Golem also sports an eye patch, a nod to longtime Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan. The tale of the Golem is about hubris and unintended consequences, but as with Borges’ retelling, it is also about self-reflection and the nature of humanity. Feldman’s soft modeling of the clay and layered, dripping glaze reinforce the Golem’s connection to its material.

Many of the pieces in TERRORCOTTA! emanate from moralistic tales for Children. Struwwelboy (2025) is a streetwear-clad update of the German tale of Struwwelpeter (shock-headed Peter), meant to warn children of the consequences of poor hygiene. Pugot Mamu (2025) is a headless Filipino creature with a gaping mouth for a neck that loves to dine on disobedient children. Similarly, Qallupilluit (2025) is a mythical water-dwelling creature that snaps up wayward Inuit children who get too close to the water’s edge. In the Book of Imaginary Beings, Borges also provides us with no shortage of faeries, demons, and other creatures that won’t hesitate to kidnap or devour those who disobey.

A final example that brings the eclectic spirit of TERRORCOTTA! in line with Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings is the inclusion of (We Thought He Was a Goner) But the Cat Came Back (2025). If you’re younger than 50, you likely remember the song The Cat Came Back from its fluffy late ‘70s version by Canadian folk singer Fred Penner. The original song is much thornier—perhaps even more so for its racial politics than its content. The Cat Came Back was written by Harry S. Miller, a white Tin Pan Alley songwriter who often wrote in black vernacular. The original sheet music was labeled by its publishers as “a comic negro absurdity” and fits neatly into the late nineteenth century category of “coon songs” written for the entertainment of white audiences at the expense of Black ones. 

Miller filled his song with a litany of graphic cat abuse, including being hit with a “brickbat,” drowned, electrocuted, picked up in a tornado along with his kittens, killed in a trainwreck, and perhaps most infamously, shot with “a musket full of nails and dynamite.” Ultimately, the cat passes away while watching an organ grinder play… but returns as a ghost. Like Miller’s bright, catchy earworm of a song that contains unimaginable darkness, Feldman uses bright, candy-colored glazes and approachable forms. Look closer, and you’ll notice that Feldman’s glazes have picked up new layers of richness and dissonance. Where speckled hobby glazes once held sway, Feldman is developing a new surface language that bubbles, crackles, drips, and flakes.

TERRORCOTTA! is wide-ranging in its scope, and that’s by design. Like Jorge Luis Borges, Sasha Feldman has assembled a highly personal, highly idiosyncratic bestiary based around his fears, his obsessions, and even his identity. Feldman approaches this project with a lightness that allows for humor to creep into the edges of his darkest subjects, and vice-versa. Future archaeologists may well uncover these manufactured relics of the Anthropocene and feel like Hanako is the Rosetta Stone, finally explaining the function of the millions of porcelain toilets in the archeological record. TERRORCOTTA! serves as a record of a very fraught moment in history, with mass deportations, a brewing constitutional crisis, and an economy that hangs in the balance. These artifacts of the future speak to our current moment… and if exposing horror can take away a fraction of its power, Sasha Feldman is doing his job.

Garth Johnson is the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Curator of Ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art