Tomorrow
Artist Statement:
Mortality is a subject that people often treat as taboo. Perhaps that is why it is so popular in the art worldpeople address death to bring awareness to all of the faults of humanity. However, the world is not entirely hopeless. Like wildlife receiving nutrients from a decomposing animal, the world has its methods of recovering and growing. This heroic rise from defeatthis rebirthis what Mary Aldridge chooses to explore through her art.Rebirthwhat Aldridge sees as life ascending from bad situationsis something that she naturally gravitates toward in her art.
This is illustrated through her show Tomorrow, featuring a human skeleton curved into the classical Ouroboros shapea snake biting its own tail. Ouroboros symbolizes rebirth and the circle of life.
Using this subject as well as the circle, Aldridge creates a message that life will continue on after humanity is gone. With a bird on the skeletons hip and a nest with an egg and baby bird inside of the rib cage, it insists upon having hope for the future. In all that the world is suffering right nowwhen humanity is gone Tomorrow, the world will continue on and flourish in its absence.
