And When the Sun Rises: Mara Duvra

Mara Duvra will combine photographic images and poetic text to create her exhibition And When the Sun Rises. This exhibition continues to build on her larger body of work, Tending: meditations on interiority and Blackness, an ongoing project that centers softer visual representations of women of color, using poetic and ephemeral imagery to understand Blackness beyond public identities. This will be an installation of interior landscapes that encourage stillness and reflection.

 

This is a meditation on longing / on interiority and Blackness / on self-definition and a process of becoming / on feeling / on moments that fracture and the surreality of otherness / on morning light and devotion / on words that cling to flesh / on emotional and visual motifs / on flesh /on fragments from another day / a silent elsewhere / a tender seam. –Mara Duvra

 

And When the Sun Rises, a line from the poem, A Litany for Survival, by Audre Lorde, will serve as an invocation of time and potential. All of the elements of this exhibition, the installation of photographic images, poetry, and video, will come together to create a meditative environment focusing on the moments that make someone feel whole. With this exhibition Duvra contemplates what makes us vulnerable and what can be grounding, introducing wonder and imagination into the handling of Black identities. These poetic representations of tenderness, calm and creativity will add to the rich anthology of the ongoing work of Tending.

 

Mara Duvra is a visual artist and writer. Her research-based practice combines photography, poetry, and video to create installations that explore stillness and interiority as critical modes of self-study. Duvra’s current body of work, Tending: meditations on interiority and blackness, uses poetic and ephemeral imagery to understand Blackness beyond resistance or public identity. This work is about the quiet and quotidian, the still and meditative, and considers possibilities for Black subjectivity that center tenderness. Duvra is originally from Maryland, and received a BA in Studio Art and Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her work has been featured in local galleries such as Soo Visual Arts Center, Public Functionary, and Yeah Maybe, and she has held artist residencies at The Soap Factory and The White Page. Duvra is currently a Jerome Emerging Artist Fellow, Artists Initiative Grant Recipient, and an instructor of painting and drawing at Saint Paul Academy and Summit School.

 

Mara Duvra is a fiscal year 2019 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislator; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.