Dinorá Justice, “Seeing As We Are,”at The Allen Center

on exhibition from April 15 - May 21, 2025

April 22, 2025

Seeing As We Are
Paintings by Dinorá Justice

April 15 - May 21, 2025

Artist Talk & Reception: Tuesday, April 29th at 7pm

Register HERE.

Open Hours: Thursdays~ May 1, 8, 15, from 12-2pm

Artist Statement: 

I started the 'Portrait' paintings in late 2016, when I was thinking of the biases regarding traditional associations of nature with the feminine. The linguistic heritage of the expression Mother Nature feminizes the environment, and gives our patriarchal system permission to extend its logic of subjugation and exploitation to nature, with the disastrous results that are pushing us to the brink of climate catastrophe. In this project I work with iconic female figures of the Western canon by painters such as Matisse and Ingres, from a period in their careers in which they explored a fascination with the exotic Middle East through paintings of odalisques, who were quasi-slave women kept in seclusion. In my paintings I substitute trees, plants and flowers for drapery and furniture, forcing a visual relocation of the female form from the realm of the intimate to that of the universal.

Since 2014, I have been hand-marbling areas directly on canvas, and using their organic swirls and veins to echo designs found in nature. In my paintings, patterns created by marbling concentrate on the figure as well as on parts of the landscape, tying those parts together visually and conceptually.

Seeing As We Are is part of the exhibition series, "Women Seeing Women", sponsored in part by the Newton Cultural Council.