Tamara Zibners: Drawings and Photographs

Baubo, Greek Goddess of laughter, obscenity, and sacred sexuality, denizen of Eleusinian Mysteries, known for making Demeter laugh, lurks anew in the studio of Roswell artist Tamara Zibners.

The white edges of scrapped drawings and photographs, sitting in the sun on the artist’s window ledge, have marked a four-year fade as she has witnessed the slow passing of her mother, while her own child grew into a six-year-old.

Working with salvaged pieces of images in her studio, the artist celebrates fragments of past ideas and moments, color ravaged by time, reworked and made new.

“The compressed pictorial composition, near-total image obliteration, and over-saturated color are visual representations of informational and emotional overload that I observe of the world while existing in the confinements of domesticity and motherhood.”

Zibners believes that generational trauma is real, that we pass on our experiences to those closest to us in ways that we currently cannot measure.

Her drawings are made quickly, spurred by intuition in floods of emotion, relying heavily on dark humor, with a style that suggests she is holding space for her teenage self. There are scenes from her parent’s home and her own, from the refuge that is her family, and even from the airports from numerous visits to see her mother in California.

“My mom died from ALS this past year, which ravaged her body, starting with her voice. While going through boxes in her closet, I found her plaster molds of her feet she had made for orthotics, the year my son was born. These have become a source of meditation for me. Not only because of how the light falls on them, or how smooth they are to touch, but because of the cold material.”

The exhibition will continue through February 22.