Tamsin Avra

…So That This May Become False

March 1-30, 2024

Predictions - Watercolor and sewn glass beading on paper - 11 x 15

From the artist: “This body of work is a reflection on the concept of prophecy, on what it means to speak of impending doom. Most things are quite certain these days, data-driven and statistically highly probable. We generally trust that all will remain constant, like the Sun that rises every morning. We trust that any and all chaos is an unknowable act of God.

“These pieces consider whether the Unthinkable can be thought, and whether it may live inside us as potentiality. When asked why she had never written about the Bomb, Hannah Arendt replied, ‘You do it! It’s in your bones!,’ referring to the radioactive particles, leftover from an extensive program of nuclear testing, which live inside the bodies of all persons born 1951 or later, a reminder of how the Unthinkable has made us in Its image.

“Common to all these pieces is the incorporation of hand-sewn glass beading: self-imposed tedium. Integral to this project was a purposeful slowing down and refusing to optimize my process. One person suggested to me that I could save time by drawing my lines with a pen rather than painstakingly sewing on each bead. To the contrary, these works reject the headlong rush toward predetermined ‘completion.’ These tiny beads, for me, are a granular visualization of contingency. Each a different moment, each capable of altering in some small way both the past and future of the piece, capable of making something true, or false.

“Ultimately these pieces are expressions of hope. It is the duty of art to doomsay, but unless you are a speculator or a stockbroker there is no reason to speak of doom if it is inevitable.”

Tamsin Avra is a DC-based multimedia art maker. She has painted her whole life but has not received any formal art education. Her sources of inspiration are many and varied but include artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Paul Klee, thinkers such as Gunther Anders, and Biblical parables and symbolism.

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