"Overall, 'The Black Woman Is God' comports with SOMArts’ curatorial practices. The main gallery is a loft-like space with a second, windowless chamber on the far end. The placement of three-dimensional or otherwise large-scale works on the floor is usually deliberate and highly selective, and the paintings and smaller pieces are hung on the walls with the minimum viable amount of breathing room.

It’s not cluttered, exactly. But there is enough to keep the eye engaged that a piece that exerts a tractor beam from across the room can seem even more powerful. The one I have in mind is Tania L. Balan-Gaubert’s Sibyl # 3 / Zili Dechennen (Zili Unleashed). The Haitian-American Balan-Gaubert’s Sibyls series “aims to refuse Western demonization of African religion and ritual,” and while the hooded figure with an electrifying gaze in this work cannot be divorced from that context, it could also be read as a mysterious saint from Eastern Orthodox Christianity, with red and gold sequins and a multicolored mosaic halo. This Sibyl clutches her belly, which may be pregnant, and holds her left arm up, its palm forward. A human heart sits at her throat, and a bandanna with an American flag print conceals her mouth. It’s archetypal, nearly Tarot-esque. You cannot look away."

+Peter Lawrence Kane, SF WEEKLY

recently happened upon these features of Sibyl #3 in all her glory! so happy to have participated in BAM this year.

click the images to read more :)

sibyl #4, acrylic, sequins, rhinestones, pearls, seashells and starfish on wood, 2016

Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers

“In late antiquity and the early common era, sibyls mourned aryan destruction of the civilization of the dark mother, covering the known world with their lamentations —-libyan sibyl of Africa, delphic sibyl of Greece, cimmerian sibyl of Italy, erythraean sibyl (Cassandra) of Babylon, sibyl of Samos, Greece, cumean sibyl of Magna Graecia (south Italy and Sicily), hellespontic sibyl of Troy, phrygian sibyl of Asia, canaanite sibyl in Sicily, and the tiburtine sibyl of Rome. Eurocentric historians would later refer only to sibyls of Ephesus in Asia, Samos in Gree, and Cumae near Naples in Italy, omitting the african sibyl of Libya an omission that may mark the beginning of historical obliteration of the african origins of world civilizations. ”

— Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum (excerpt from the chapter "dark mother of Sicily --- Ilba Nera. sibyls and black madonna of Chiaramonte Gulfi")

sibyl #4 + me. #latergram #almostdonegram #whyyoustallinggram #tanialaure

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     sibyl #4 progress

sibyl #4. end of 2015 goals. #tanialaure

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sibyl #3 / zili dechennen (zili unleashed), acrylic, sequins, faceted jewels, rhinestones and glass on wood, 2015.

       final stretch. sibyl #3. #amen. #tanialaure.

sibyl #3. progress.