Michelle Samour
Milk and Honey: Stuck

Media: Pigmented abaca with mother of pearl inclusions, gouache
Size: 40" x 113" x 2"
$15000

Artist Statement:
In this work, transition and change evidence themselves environmentally and politically.

Milk and Honey: Stuck uses the actual cartography of the Middle East, beginning with my own history as one of the Palestinian Diaspora, to talk about how the redefinition of borders by colonialists over a hundred years ago has created disruption in that region of the world. The work uses the methods of fracturing, mirroring and re-configuring and the traditions of indigenous design that I grew up with (including mother of pearl/abalone handiwork), to celebrate the cultural history of this region while at the same time subversively critiquing it.

Mother of Pearl (acrylic) is cut into the shapes of Israel, Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and the settlements, as are the resulting shapes occurring from the cartography’s mirroring. These fragments are embedded into sheets of overbeaten Abaca pigmented the colors of honey; once dried the paper is painted with values of white gouache. ‘Stuck’ in honey, these land masses are transformed into biological specimens creating a tension between stasis and potentiality, the search for the promised land; the land of ‘milk and honey’. Habitat Fragmentation (the effects of geographic fragmentation on biologic diversity), flagella (the means of movement for microscopic organisms), plant metamorphosis, root structures and cell division are the visual vocabulary suggested in this re-examination of land as a malleable, movable biologic and political construct.

Biography

Michelle Samour is a multi-media artist whose installations, drawings and handmade paperworks explore the intersections between science, technology and the natural world. Samour resides in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University. She has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France; and an Artist-in-Residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME; the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada; and P.R.I.N.T. Press in Denton, TX. Samour has exhibited at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA; the Museum of Modern Art in Strasbourg, FR; the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI; the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston, TX; the Racine Art Museum, WI; and the Fitchburg Art Museum, MA. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council including a 2014 Fellowship in Drawing, a Society of Arts and Crafts New England Artist Award, and grants from the Cushman Family Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Daynard Fund to study historic papermaking in France and Japan. Samour has been featured in The Boston Globe, The Boston Herlad, ARTnews, Surface Design, FiberArts and Hand Papermaking Magazine, and on various National Public Radio member stations. Her work is included in public and private collections including the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, International Paper Company, and the Meditech Corporation.

http://michellesamour.com/