Absorbing the Storm - Artshack Gallery, Bed Stuy, Brooklyn - March 16 - April 29, 2023

Artshack Gallery is pleased to present a solo show by our winter 2023 AIR, Adrienne Elise Tarver. Through a new medium of ceramics, Tarver explores her interest in root systems and the complicated structures that grow beneath us, in the dark. In these new sculptures, she is inspired by mangrove roots, the most identifiable feature of the unique and durable trees that protect tropical coasts, straddle fresh and saltwater, and provide home and refuge to a complex ecosystem. They absorb the effects of increasingly destructive tropical storms. Her interest stems from their resilience, and presence in the tropics which has long been one of the core subjects of her work. The mangrove tree grows its roots above ground, making visible the complicated network and stabilizing structures that normally go unnoticed. The resulting ceramic structures started with ideas of mangrove roots, but are also influenced by global architecture and braided or bound hairstyles. She also explores the multiple meanings of “roots,” a word that also speaks to ancestral origins, and connects to the cultural resiliency responsible for today's diasporic Black identities, and the unseen roots connecting peoples across continents.