Tabitha Vevers, Untitled (after Kerry James Marshall) from Series I: Reversing the Gaze, 2018, Oil on Ivorine with tintype frame and fabric, 7 x 7 1/2 inches.
Tabitha Vevers: Lover's Eyes
October 11, 2019 - February 2, 2020
Tabitha Vevers explores themes of power, pain, love, and liberation in her prolific series Lover’s Eyes. Inspired by traditional eye miniatures, a genre of portrait jewelry that became the height of fashion in the Georgian era, Vevers embraces historic painting techniques to create contemporary, jewel-like eye portraits in oil on Ivorine. Once worn as emblems of illicit affairs, eye miniatures, also known as lover’s eyes, were popularized in the eighteenth century by the Prince of Wales (later George IV) who sent his lover a miniature portrait of his eye as a memento. Vevers appropriates subjects from art history and popular culture to cleverly re-imagine the traditional male gaze from the perspective of a contemporary woman. This exhibition will complement the Gibbes’ collection of miniature portraits. The first American miniature portraits were painted in Charleston, and today the Gibbes is home to one of the most prestigious portrait miniature collections in the United States.
The Gibbes Museum of Art | 135 Meeting Street, Charleston, SC 2940 | 843.722.2706 | www.gibbesmuseum.org