A Tacit Inheritance
Elizabeth M. Claffey & Rania Matar
November 4, 2020 - January 10, 2021
Virtual opening November 12, 6:30PM (Click HERE to register, free and open to the public)
Aurora PhotoCenter at Marsh Gallery, Herron School of Art + Design (directions & gallery hours)
A Tacit Inheritance, a two-person exhibition featuring the work of artists Rania Matar and Elizabeth M. Claffey, explores themes of identity and memory within the broader experiences of women across generations and cultures.
Rania Matar’s project, Unspoken Conversations, is a meticulously crafted portrait series that depicts womanhood at two seminal stages of life, adolescence and middle age, with both mother and daughter included in a single frame. The images reveal each subject’s subtle glances, gestures, and emotions that convey simultaneously the personal and universal complexities of the mother and daughter relationship. “In this work,” writes Matar, “I seek to focus on our essence, our physicality, our vulnerability, on growing up and growing old – the commonalities that make us human, to emphasize underlying similarities rather than apparent differences across cultures and to ultimately find beauty in our shared humanity.” Claffey’s ongoing series, Matrilinear, offers a poetic window into the layers of memory embedded in a series of simple object portraits that embody a collective thread weaving together past, present, and future. “Women play many complex roles within the structures of kinship: daughter, sister, cousin, mother, aunt, grandmother; these roles can be fluid and at times overlap,” says Claffey. Matrilinear aims to create space for the deep knowledge base that women can develop through interaction with home space and each other.” Taken together, these two photographers explore cross-cultural and cross-generational themes of universal womanhood.
Elizabeth M. Claffey is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Indiana University in Bloomington. She is an honors graduate of Earlham College and has an MFA in photography from Texas Woman’s University, where she also earned a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. She received a 2012-13 William J. Fulbright Fellowship, which was used to support her documentary and creative research in Eastern Europe. Elizabeth’s work focuses on the way personal and familial narratives are shaped by interactions with both domestic and institutional structures. Her work has been recognized by PDN Magazine, Center Santa Fe, The Eddie Adams Workshop, and various other galleries and publications including Form & Concept Gallery, The Kinsey Institute, and Western Exhibitions in Chicago.
Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. This cross-cultural experience and her personal narrative inform her photography. Matar’s work has been widely published and exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and more. A recipient of several grants and awards, including a 2018
Guggenheim Fellowship, her work explores issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood, both in the United States and the Middle East. She has published three books: L’Enfant-Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; and Ordinary Lives, 2009. She is currently associate professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Operational support for Aurora PhotoCenter provided by the Efroymson Famiy Fund.
Herron’s artist-in-residence program is made possible with support through CityWay, a luxury mixed-use community located in downtown Indianapolis. Complementary parking is made possible by The Great Frame Up, Indianapolis. Virtual Reality presentations for Herron Galleries are made possible with support by an anonymous donor.
