Artist Statement
An unremitting shadow plagues me.

The foundational motifs of my work emanate from the tragic residue of sexual harm. Across diverse mediums, I excavate shame and dissociation, rage and despair, resilience, repair, and at times, redemption. Defying stigma, my life story becomes a dark lens through which to view omnipresent truths of global suffering- trauma, memory, secrets both kept and told. I strive for insight, empathy, and the mending of wounds.

The resultant works are deliberate acts devised to evoke manifestations of the vestiges of traumatic moments repeatedly relived through the marks left on a page, the remnants of shattered glass, or words uttered across an abyss. In the case of dissociation, a mirror turns up empty, void of expression, wresting humanity from the depths of an erased mind.

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Biography

Tania Love Abramson, MFA, is a conceptually focused visual artist, lecturer, writer, performer and filmmaker, and a survivor of chronic childhood sexual abuse (50yrslater.com). She is also a Lecturer in the Honors Collegium at UCLA where she co-created the Art & Trauma course in 2018, and then created its sequel in 2021, Feminism, Art and Metaphors of Trauma.  Ms. Abramson lectures widely in both the United States and internationally, and is the author, or co-author of numerous scholarly articles, as well as the sole author of three artbooks. Her first artbook, Shame and the Eternal Abyss, explores the dual experiences of shame and dissociation through her art and poetic commentary. Ms. Abramson then produced two small volumes, Truth Lies and Concern, both of which are part of a series of books loosely tied together by ambiguous words and experiences. The latter volumes can also be characterized as obliquely crafted narratives in drawings, photographs and poetic structure, that emanate from personal stories, yet enigmatically transcend to the universal.

Tania is currently working on a book chapter on Art & Trauma for Oxford University Press, and a graphic memoir that combines drawings, poetry and prose. She is also the Art Editor of the poetry and art journal BREATHE, and a sporadic contributor to her blog (50yrslater.com), her Twitter, and her Instagram pages.