The Ghetto Tarot Project

The Ghetto Tarot is a photographic interpretation of the traditional tarot deck in the ghetto. The scenes are inspired by the Rider Waite Tarot deck (originally designed in 1909 by artist Pamela Colman Smith) and are replicated together with award-winning documentary photographer Alice Smeets and a group of Haitian artists called Atis Rezistans (Resistant Artists) in the Haitian slums using only material found or created locally. On several cards the artist's art was used, that includes symbolism from the Vodou religion to embody the important meaning of the cards original symbols.

The name of the Ghetto Tarot is inspired by the "Ghetto Biennale", which is an invitation by Atis Rezistans to visiting Western and non-Western artists to come to Haiti and create art in collaboration with them to produce a show at the end. Atis Rezistans use trash to create art with their own visions that are a reflection of the beauty they see hidden within the waste. 

 

inspoTania Laureartists, haiti

I'm curating this show! Two of my paintings will also be featured.

Excited and nervous beyond words. Check the press release. 

featuresTania Laure
"A place to belong"
“HOME IS THE UNFORGIVING AND UNBEARABLE METAPHOR that nonetheless is perhaps the cleanest motivation for an artist: to find a place for herself, a place to belong, which is also finding herself. I do not mean this in an uncomplicated way: the act of belonging is concurrent with the undoing and unraveling of belonging (and its impositions on the self) such that belonging is tussle and fray and soothe. Home is tenuous at best, especially for the Black woman whose artistic legacy is to leave home, literally or figuratively. Further, the idea of home, of a land to belong to, remains a struggle for this Black woman artist, particularly because ‘home’ and ‘land’ and ‘nation’ have been put to use in colonization, war, genocide, terms of nationalism that are irreconcilable to her sense of herself not only because they evoke and enunciate patriarchy and white supremacy but especially because they do not speak to the home she is longing for. She cannot give up on the idea of home, of a place to belong, but she cannot merely accept what other people have deemed home to be. Hence home, like its distant relative language, is in need of repair.

+ Kevon Everod Quashie,
Black Women, Identity, and Cultural Theory: (Un)Becoming the Subject”
Tania Laurethoughts

Sibyl #3 was selected for another group show! - Faith [In]Action? 

United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities' Center for Arts, Faith and Culture partnered with Intermedia Arts and Obsidian Arts to present two complementary, juried exhibitions:

Opening Reception
Thursday, January 28│6 – 8 PM
Program at 7 PM
United's Bigelow Chapel
3000 5th Street NW, New Brighton

Closing Reception
Sunday, April 17│ 5 – 7 PM
Intermedia Arts
2822 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis
More infornation, hours, fees

Faith [In]Action?
At United
Which is it? Faith in Action or Faith InAction? How does the faith community establish its convictions and response to the Black Lives Matter movement?

Hands Up Don’t Shoot – HER
At Intermedia Arts
Where are the protests and riots when the lives of black women are ended at the hands of police?

 

featuresTania Laure