AUSTIN, TX.- DORF announces Figures, an exhibition of new and existing works by Gabo Martini, Barbara Miñarro, Teruko Nimura, and Maja Ruznic, four artists who address memory, identity, history and transgenerational trauma.

Memory is complicated and powerful; it helps, haunts, and hinders us. Since as early as the 1800s, psychologists have studied intergenerational transmission, examining trauma as it relates to the handing down of neurotic traits from parent to child. Through sculpture, installation, and painting, these women reveal their personal and collective memory as first– and second–generation immigrants and explore how their family histories are ingrained in their identities and psyches.

Gabo Martini presents a selection of large vessels adorned with hand carved poetry addressing trauma and shedding light on truth.

Barbara Miñarro creates a site-specific installation utilizing the tactile memory of clothing, earth, and physical body to express the emotional journey of immigration.

Another site-specific installation by Teruko Nimura responds to the threat of our destructive actions and their consequences, contemplating the legacy of nuclear power from the atomic bomb to Fukushima and the dangers of radiation pollution in our oceans.

Maja Ruznic shows a series of abstract paintings that reveal ghostly, discomforting, fluid figures that seem to appear from nothingness, shaped by the stains of memory. These are presented alongside her contorted soft, tactile sculptures that appear frustrated by their own form, inhabiting Ruznic’s ancestors clothing.

This is Martini’s and Miñarro’s first time exhibiting in Austin. Figures is the final presentation for DORF’s 2018 inaugural season.