Tara Tavi

Lives and works in Pomona, CA, USA

Artist statement

My artistic explorations are thought-experiments, attempts to learn about myself, my experiences, and the world around me. My practice ranges from painting, to transforming old books into otherworldly dioramas, creating mixed-media installations and sculptures, and creating music and films. Recently, I have been interested in what subtext I can interpret and possibly subvert in old magazines. I have been creating collages that, once illuminated, take on a cinematic quality. By juxtaposing competing images from both sides of vintage magazine pages, nuanced narratives result. The resulting complex imagery peers beneath the veneer of mass media and raises questions about chance and intentionality. For me, it feels like a kind of bibliomancy, similar to doing book dioramas. In each medium, my art focuses on mortality, transcendence, natural, unnatural, and supernatural phenomena. My goal in all of the forms of art I explore is to suggest that there are endless, open-ended narratives to every event. We are caught in this Gorgon’s knot and each of us contributes to the unraveling, but none of us can see the totality. I imagine the world as a cosmology that I am illuminating within myself. We are all lanterns glowing briefly in the scheme of things and I want to know what illuminates us and what we are projecting out into the universe.

Artwork