Pandora's box

This grouping of works in handmade paper was produced during my 2019 Artist Residency at Dieu Donné in the Brooklyn Navy Yards. The term Pandora's "box" is actually a misnomer, a 19th century mistranslation from the original Greek, which originally alluded to a large terracotta vessel. In my reinterpretation Pandora's vessel is replaced by eight book-like forms, containers of narratives and histories. The books are are pigmented in a range of skin tones, the paper pulp manipulated while wet to evoke folds and wrinkles of skin. Here, Pandora's vessel is the physical material of her body itself, the myths and narratives about her inseparable from her female form.