Mimi Hart Silver statement

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TERRITORIES/KINGDOMS presents   2D   work   across   multiple   mediums   in conversation.Paper has been manipulated to resemble hide or skin and crudely  patch  worked  together  to  create  the  illusion  of  maps  and  aerial photography;  while,  classically  rendered  abstract  oil  paintings  visualize transcendence in the remains of a bird hunt. Silver’s work is largely drawn from her experience of being a Southerner, including her observations on both   cultural   and   personal   trauma.    Overarching   themes   of   social, terrestrial  and  biological  division,  hierarchy,  and  hybridity  harp  on  the shifting philosophical perspectives of part and whole.

In the paper works, roughhewn swathes of earth and skin tones are bound into  discomforting  tapestries  of  flesh.   They  reflect  on  the  trauma  of  our past,  the  ways  in  which  it  permeates  our  present  geography, and  the seaming  impossibility  of  healing.   In  the  paintings,  wings  and  legs  and breasts   of   are   roped   together   in   the   aftermath   of   carnage   andtransformed  into  unearthly  beasts  and  intimate  portraits  of  physical  pain and  spiritual  ascension.   They  examine  the  disconnection  from  memory caused  by  traumatic  events,  and  how  these  distant  memories  become buried  in  the  felt  experience  through  generations.   Both bodies  of  work personify the symbiotic relationship between the visceral and ephemeral, the  continuum  of  life  and  death,  and  a  search  for  meaning  in  human tragedy as a coping mechanism.