Tabitha Vevers: Narrative Bodies
James and Audrey Foster Galleries, Fourth Floor Hallway Gallery
January 24 – May 17, 2009
Narrative Bodies is a mid-career survey exhibition of work by painter Tabitha 
Vevers that highlights the artist's feminist engagement with tradition and myth. The exhibition will be on view at DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park from January 24 through May 17, 2009.
Creating personal narratives that explore the female body and sexuality, Vevers uses old master techniques on an intimate scale to address socio-political issues that include war, AIDS, environmental degradation, the relationship of the sexes, and women's historical positions in society. The artist was initially compelled to paint the figure in the early 1980s by a "desire to take the female nude back from art history and portray her with the complexity of an individual woman's perspective."
Tabitha Vevers: Narrative Bodies will explore the development of the artist's work through sixty paintings selected from her different series: Secular Icons, Flesh Memories, A History of Cloning, the Shell Series, Women & Knives, Flying Dreams, Lover's Eyes, and the Eden Series. Using a variety of art historical sources as the springboard for her ideas, Vevers often links the form and materials of her art-making to her creation of meaning. In the Women & Knives series, for example, knives carved out of bone become the surface on which female perpetrators of violence throughout history are incised using the scrimshaw technique. And in her intimate paintings from the Shell Series, which explore the metaphorical embrace of human and sea life, the artist references a 12th century Japanese tradition of painting directly on shells. In her most recent series, Eden (2006 – present), the artist grapples with gender, sexuality, and cloning, and the often controversial role of these themes within science and religion.
Tabitha Vevers: Narrative Bodies is the third in a series of solo exhibitions curated at DeCordova of New England women artists. Funding has been generously provided by the Lois and Richard England Family Foundation, the Robert E. Davoli and Eileen McDonagh Charitable Foundation, a grant from the Artists' Resource Trust, and an anonymous donor. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue with an essay by former Director of Curatorial Affairs Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, curator of the exhibition. Tabitha Vevers divides her time between Cambridge and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and the exhibition will travel from DeCordova to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in the summer of 2009.
Throughout the exhibition, visit the Process Gallery on the 3rd floor to learn more about Vevers’ creative process and inspirations.
2.1 Eye Wonder Family Program: Flying Dreams
Drop-in anytime between 1 – 3 pm
Perfect for families with children ages 6 and up
2.3 The Art of Objects Teacher Workshop
Tuesday from 4 – 6 pm
4.3 Artist Talk: Tabitha Vevers
Canceled
5.9 Curator Talk with Nick Capasso
Saturday at 3 pm
