Open Call: Pauline Shaw

In the installation The Tomb-Sweeper’s Mosquito Bite, Pauline Shaw meditates on the relationships between body and spirit, cultural and ancestral history, and science and mysticism. The work consists of a large-scale felted tapestry made of wool, silk, and other fibers. The seemingly abstract imagery derives from the artist’s extensive research into memory and MRI scans, mapping personal memories as well as neural and bodily abnormalities and degeneration. The resulting collage serves as an attempt to capture something as intangible as a memory, simultaneously blending the fragility and fallibility of processes of recollection and perception. Suspended from the ceiling, the tapestry is counterbalanced by small objects made from cast sugar, glass, ceramic, and carved stone (housed in blown-glass vessels) based on Taoist designs and altar items. Some vessels hold tangible illustrations of specific, or passed-down, memories and heirlooms that correlate to the abstract MRI scans. Exploring the erasure of traditions, mythologies, and memory Shaw has experienced as a first-generation Asian American woman, the installation communicates the rootlessness and cultural confusion of a diasporic or immigrant experience.