TORI TINSLEY
HUGS
Down in the Valley, 2020, 72” x 64”
Exhibition Details
February 12th — April 19th
Reception with the Artist: Friday, February 12th, 2021 4-9 PM
Laney Contemporary announces Tori Tinsley’s exhibition entitled HUGS, the Atlanta-based artist’s first solo exhibition in Savannah.
HUGS, as one might imagine, has everything to do with the power of touch. It elucidates the artist’s own journey with giving care as a daughter, as a mother, and as an artist, trained with an MFA and also a Master’s degree in Art Therapy. Her work recognizes the multi-dimensional roles of caregivers. It points to the lack of physical connection and the dearth of touch that so many are experiencing since Spring of 2020 with the onslaught of the pandemic. Tinsley takes solace in the visualization of and exploration of the term “contact comfort” which she borrows from psychologist Harry Harlow. Harlow’s mid-twentieth century research emphasized maternal separation and dependency and is still cited as part of a fraught and under-studied history of mother-child dynamics. “Contact comfort” which recognizes that a lack of physical connection can cause both psychological and physical stresses, offers a concise reflection of our current circumstances. Tinsley notes, “so many people are having to live with little to no physical contact and it begs the question, if we can't physically connect with one another are there other ways we can show up for and care for each other?” Empathy, when prioritized, can shift entire agendas and re-envision social systems. To quote Tinsley’s experienced reflections: “It can be tough work, having such deep and purposeful connections, but the end results far outweigh the burdens we may temporarily carry. As Desmond Tutu once wrote, ‘Nothing is too much trouble for love.’”
HUGS is a collection of works shown together for the first time. It includes new paintings and some works produced over recent years while the artist was in the throes of attending to her own mother’s decline due to a form of dementia called FTD. At the same time, she was raising her young son and, during Covid, coordinating the homecare of her nephews. Her paintings offer not only a child’s perspective on a parent, but also a parent’s gaze upon the child and the interchangeability of these roles. Tinsley’s fleshy, emotionally expressive characters, which she refers to as “hugs,” are indeterminate enough to inhabit all-loving figures, open for the viewer’s projection and recognition of human interaction. They are simple and gestural, wide-eyed and saddened, playful and worried, interchangeably weary and energetic, and yet encouraging. The full spectrum of human emotion is on display. Tinsley’s mother passed away in May 2020 and her work leans into the very raw process of reflecting upon the cycles of loving, living, caring, and loss.
One series of seven paintings that she began for Art Papers and completed in May 2020 is entitled There Will be Sacrifices Along the Way. It seems prescient of this ragged year of losses as it addresses simultaneous love and exhaustion. In another series, an unexpected, local, set of characters find their way into Tinsley’s work: the donkeys. Treated as three-quarter-length portraiture at times, with a dynamic Pop palette, the donkeys connect with a week that Tinsley spent as a guest on Ossabaw Island, a beloved barrier island off the coast of Savannah, which is home to a historic herd of wild donkeys. They called the artist’s attention in particular because a number of them suffered from a brain disease, so they were neutered, but one of them still gave birth; and today this mother and baby remain inseparable. The paintings are frontal but have a hidden backside, existing as both painting and sculpture, with parts that are presented and parts that are hidden.
HUGS takes us on a journey of the full-dimensionality of human connectivity and why it is the only thing that matters.
