Dinora Justice

Portraits

I started the Portrait paintings in late 2016, when I was thinking of the biases regarding traditional associations of nature with the feminine. The linguistic heritage of the expression Mother Nature feminizes the environment, and gives our patriarchal system permission to extend its logic of subjugation and exploitation to nature, with the disastrous results that are pushing us to the brink of climate catastrophe. In this project I work with iconic female figures of the Western canon by painters such as Matisse and Ingres, from a period in their careers in which they explored a fascination with the exotic Middle East through paintings of odalisques, who were quasi-slave women kept in seclusion. In my paintings I substitute trees, plants and flowers for drapery and furniture, forcing a visual relocation of the female form from the realm of the intimate to that of the universal.

Since 2014, I have been hand-marbling areas directly on canvas, and using their organic swirls and veins to echo designs found in nature. In my paintings, patterns created by marbling concentrate on the figure as well as on parts of the landscape, tying those parts together visually and conceptually.

At the Border

The hand-made, decorated benches in this project are about cultural baggage, journeys, time spent waiting in bureaucratic limbo, and the perception of the refugee or immigrant as a burden. The variations on decorative motifs relate to culture and memory. This project can be displayed in many ways: as a group, singularly, with an accompanying video piece, and also with a group of about 20 hand-painted photographs titled “Strange Stranger”.

Totems

Totems is about the loss of something vital, and working through ways in which materials and assembling techniques can express ideas and emotions.
In 2017, I began to work on pieces of driftwood that I collected on a lake in Maine, with the idea to honor the memory of places affected by man-made interventions. But working with the skeletons of those long-gone trees made me realize that there was a bigger picture to be seen: on one side, that of the systematic destruction of natural environments, and on the other, the valiant but perhaps ineffective attempts so far to restore the health of the natural world. I chose to use materials like plastic string, tape, rope, nails, canvas, vintage crochet pieces, fragments of jewelry, tassels and other found objects of consumer society, in an esthetics of “meticulous slap-dash” that tries to visually represent the spirit of desperation, futility, and heart-breaking inertia that hobbles our efforts at preserving life on the planet.

Curators Say:

Michelle Millar Fisher, Museum of Fine Arts Boston Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts: “Dinora Justice: The Lay of the Land” explores feminine figures, lush natural environments, and richly marbled patterns in strikingly original ways. Through her visual vocabulary, Justice considers how potent forces – women, nature, decoration – that have historically been laid claim to, destroyed, or disparaged might instead liberate, strengthen and inspire. Justice married the research she conducted on her travels with her longstanding interest in ecofeminism to produce a body of work that asks the viewer to consider critically the ways in which femininity and the natural world have often been linguistically and culturally conjoined”.

Joseph R. Wolin, New York art critic and curator: “One of the most talented, dedicated, and imaginative artists it has been my pleasure to know, Dinora creates work of great beauty and meaning. Working within the traditional genre of landscape painting, she creates vivid scenes of forested places half convincingly realist, half psychedelically hallucinatory. They speak about the enduring environmental and spiritual power of nature while also expressing concern for its beleaguered future.

While still at the beginning of her professional career, Ms. Justice has already created substantial bodies of work in painting, drawing, collage, photography, and video. She works from a studio at home in the Boston area, and is quickly becoming an integral part of the regional art scene.”