Newswise — Multidisciplinary artist Dinorá Justice examines the place of women in traditional landscapes across the canon, in “Dinorá Justice: The Lay of the Land.” The exhibition will be on view from November 18, 2023 to April 14, 2024 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), in the Edward Linde Gallery (Gallery 168).
The works in Justice’s exhibition were influenced by travel to Paris and Florence, Italy, to study gendered power dynamics in portrayals of women in nineteenth century paintings. The research journey was sponsored by an SMFA Traveling Fellowship that Justice received from her alma mater, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA at Tufts).
The SMFA Traveling Fellowships provide critical early-career support for SMFA at Tufts alumni, allowing them to further develop and inform their practice. Selected by a jury, SMFA Traveling Fellowship recipients receive up to $10,000 to pursue travel and research related to their art practice. The application process is open to alumni working in any contemporary visual art discipline.
Justice’s exhibition is part of a long-standing collaboration between SMFA and the MFA. Through this collaboration, gallery space is dedicated to the work of SMFA at Tufts students or alumni each year. An exhibit last winter featured the works of recently graduated MFA students and current BFA students. The collaboration strengthens the relationship between the Museum and SMFA at Tufts, dating to SMFA’s 1876 founding, and spotlights the work of emerging artists.
“Dinorá Justice: The Lay of the Land” explores feminine figures, lush natural environments, and rich 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 eco-feminism 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--and the consequences of this association.
Her paintings are titled “after” works well known within the canon of Western art history by renowned nineteenth century European male artists, while her sculptures riff on ancient figurines that were often once boldly polychromatic and celebrated cycles of life.
The artist uses verdant greenery, colorful Brazilian fabric designs, and hand marbled canvases to remix these quintessential art historical forms. The result rejects supine or sculptural feminine figures as symbols of colonized territory or fodder for the male eye as imagined by her predecessors.
Instead, the artist’s use of pattern to anonymize and unify her subjects endows them with a degree of privacy and places them in interdependent dialogue with their outdoor settings.
The title of this exhibition is taken from a book of the same name published almost 50 years ago by feminist historian Annette Kolodny. To understand “the lay of the land” is to know an environment, literally or figuratively, whether the natural world or the web of human relationships in which we move every day.
Justice’s work invites the audience to consider the power relationships between artists, their subjects, and the wider world as stand-ins for our own relationships with gender and nature. It challenges viewers to consider what we have inherited—and what we want to perpetuate.
Justice received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 2014. "The Lay of the Land" is her first solo exhibition at the MFA. The exhibition is supported by SMFA at Tufts/Tufts University Art Galleries.
Justice lives and works in Newton, Massachusetts. She was named an SMFA Traveling Fellow in 2020.
A tradition of supporting young artists
In 1894, James William Paige left a bequest of $30,000 to SMFA at Tufts—then called the “Museum School”—to establish a travel fund. Income was to be used to send SMFA students to Europe, where they would study art for a period of two years.
By 1899, the first Traveling Scholar, Mary Brewster Hazelton, sailed to Europe. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, recipients typically traveled to Paris, Rome or Florence. Today, SMFA Traveling Fellows journey across the globe.
Notable past winners of the fellowships include Nan Goldin, Ellen Gallagher, Omer Fast, and Mike and Doug Starn, as well as more recent graduates such as Evelyn Rydz, , Gonzalo Fuenmayor, , and Daniela Rivera.
The Traveling Fellowships is one of many programs at SMFA at Tufts that supports artists in every stage of their careers. For more information, visit https://smfa.tufts.edu/.
The MFA brings many worlds together through art. Showcasing masterpieces from ancient to modern, their renowned collection of nearly 500,000 works tells a multifaceted story of the human experience—a story that holds unique meaning for everyone. From Boston locals to international travelers, visitors from all over come to experience the MFA—where they reveal connections, explore differences and create a community where all belong.
Open six days a week, the MFA’s hours are Saturday through Monday, 10 am–5 pm; Wednesday, 10 am–5 pm; and Thursday–Friday, 10 am–10 pm. Plan your visit at mfa.org.
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