Arts + Literature Laboratory presents Stone Fruit, an MFA thesis exhibition by Claire Tomkiw, from Tuesday, March 19, 2024 through April 20, 2024. Tomkiw is a recipient of the 2024 ALL Prize, awarded to graduating MFA students at the Universitiy of Wisconsin-Madison.
A reception for current exhibitions, including artist talks by ALL Prize winners Claire Tomkiw and Kate Davidson, will be held Thursday, April 11, 2024 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.
Exhibition statement:
Stone Fruit is an exploration of the performative femininity intrinsic to my experience with chronic illness and its impact on my relationship with myself and others. Large-scale alternative process photographic prints of my own MRIs and self-portraiture are displayed alongside contact prints of vintage garments, lingerie, and flower petals; blood vessels, reproductive organs, and tissue become akin to the folds of fabric, pencil-lines of plant matter, and the boning of a corset.
Thematic elements of each image are staged in a papier-mâché tableau, referencing classic vanitas still life paintings. From the picked-clean pelvic bone, to a floral arrangement teeming with bugs, each paper sculpture is an uncanny facsimile of a real-life object. This is a false and flat, but appealing, reflection of the reality of inhabiting an inherently unreliable body.
From afar, the illusion of normalcy is present. Take a closer look, however, and there is something lurking under the surface, a poisonous pit hidden in the flesh.