Textile artist Tamara Kostianovsky designs realistic elements from nature by using ribbons of useless clothing. In her last series, the artist makes broken tree stumps from pieces of her father’s clothing and integrates his belongings into a landscape of multi-colored logs. The works suggest the passing of time and represent the body returning to the environment after death.
The project is inspired by the South American people of the Andes. They think that Mother Earth is embodied by the surrounding mountains. She translates this idea by putting clothing items into sculptures which represent the earth and its environment. She confesses: “Fusing the shapes of severed tree stumps of different forms and sizes to a palette indicative of the insides of the body, [the series Tree Stumps] pays homage to the cultural heritage of the people of Latin America, while presenting an alternative way of thinking about our post-industrial relationship to nature.”
Tamara Kostianovsky was born in 1974, in Jerusalem, Israel. She grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in many resorts, such as The Jewish Museum, NY; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Exit Art, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Black and White Gallery, NY; and Magrorroca Gallery, Milan, Italy. She is the beneficiary of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2010. The artist has been awarded grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
“Kostianovsky is a graduate from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA and from the National School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently lives in New York where she works independently as an artist and holds a position of Professor of Art History at the School of Visual Arts.”
