Adrienne Elise Tarver: Roots, Water, Air

October 26, 2024 - March 8, 2025

In the site-specific exhibition Roots, Water, Air, interdisciplinary artist Adrienne Elise Tarver crafts a lush experience where nature is the beholder of time and space, and where nature is revered for its brilliance, patience, and ways of being in harmony with itself.

Connectivity is a vital part of nature that can be easily overlooked. Roots of trees inch their way through tracts of soil. They absorb water to nourish the leaves and branches in the open air and the sun’s light. Each element of nature depends on another. Similarly, like the roots of trees, the genetics of people extend through unknown generations of humans. Our collective family tree links us to thousands of generations of ancestors who existed and advanced under the same sun, traversing the same land and sea. With the passage of time, beginnings and endings become perpetual partners. Life and death cycles can be observed as one extensive gesture. This perspective of continuity and kinship inspires Roots, Water, Air

Tarver asks us to uncover and discover what is around us. Just beyond the footprint of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, on the banks of the Connecticut River, the view of Wantastiquet Mountain changes superficially from spring to summer, from fall to winter, but has remained consistent for millennia. Wantastegok is Brattleboro’s longest-known name, drawn from the confluence upstream with Wantastekw (the West River), meaning “at the river where something is lost.” The Connecticut itself is known as the “Long River” by its original inhabitants, the indigenous Sokoki Abenaki. In the expanse of time, perhaps predating language, the river and the shore and the mountain have been companions. Trees have witnessed countless moon cycles and seasons. Roots thrive, from untouched earth to modern cities and towns, meandering under contemporary engineered systems of concrete, pavement, pipes, and electrical mechanisms. Local eastern hemlocks can live up to 900 years, dwarfing the average human lifespan. 

Wisdom can be harnessed from these bodies that inhabit the world, from the trees in the forests to the rivers that flow to the air we breathe. Much in the same way that illnesses are cured and medical advancements are made by decoding the human genome, there is much to be revealed in the nature of nature. 

— Daricia Mia DeMarr, curator

My work examines the nuanced and often obscured dimensions of Black female identity, exploring the historical and cultural narratives within domestic spaces, the fantasy of the tropical seductress, and the archetype of the spiritual matriarch. This work is driven by my quest for belonging and understanding, which leads me to trace my familial roots and construct imagined lineages to fill the gaps left by unwritten or lost histories.

Central to my work are stories of the tropics and subtropics of the Americas, regions fraught with complex histories and rich in symbolic meaning. I investigate these intermediary sites of origin—usually slave trade locations—drawing connections between people and plants, and examining how ideas of adaptation, domestication, resilience, and diasporic spread manifest both metaphorically and literally. 

This exhibition, Roots, Water, Air,  embraces the ecological, symbolic, spiritual, and familial implications of roots and the elements. I am looking for moments of resonance in parallel histories, locations, and experiences.

Root systems, usually underground, speak to ideas of invisibility and finding refuge in the dark, but the above-ground roots of mangrove trees make visible these systems of resilience and structures of refuge. With their ability to straddle fresh and saltwater environments, mangroves protect coastlines, support diverse ecosystems, and serve as a powerful metaphor for the ways in which Black women have created stable environments while straddling disparate contexts, and enduring tumultuous histories and contemporary challenges.

Adrienne Elise Tarver

RELATED EVENTS

October 26, Saturday, 5 p.m. — Opening of Four New Exhibits
February 6, Thursday, 7 p.m. — Art Talk: Adrienne Elise Tarver and Daricia Mia DeMarr

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