West Bank And Gaza Strip

"My work addresses issues of the transformation of the body and the spirit through the use of clothing forms applied to found objects or placed within a contextual environment. The use of old fabrics and found objects is important in creating a work or environment that evokes a feeling of loss, or distant memory. I am interesting in the sorting of images from the past, images that are like shadows or ghosts, something not quite whole and no longer real but still of great influence and power.

In most of these works there is evidence of loss—an allusion to the passing of time; a vacant space within a form once occupied; an identity that merges fully with it's environment. To speak of this loss, I superimpose worlds. "Bodies" of sorts are caught up in unmistakably alien forms that speak of our transformative nature. A "skeletal" object or structure, which provides a context and framework, is redressed within a sheer, ghost-like skin: the resulting forms are like skins and bones—the interior and exterior of one possible system.

There is an intangible "place" where the body becomes an emotional landscape. Though I cannot define this, it is a goal of the work to describe that place. Ideally, this leads to work both mournful and humorous, simultaneously real and surreal." - Mary Tuma