1430Contemporary, Portland, 2009

This tangled notion of family echoes the artist’s own fluctuating role within her own family: In the past few years, Curtis has both suffered the loss of her mother and become a mother herself. As part of a generational continuum, familial roles are fluidly redefined as each successive wave displaces the last. As children, we covet the imminent refuge of the nuclear family, clinging to the mother in particular. Grown, we thrash defiantly, craving to be cut loose. With hunger, that grounding and originary connection is exchanged for new obsessions—romances, careers, etc.—as if to corroborate our independence. But there is no returning to that place. We are exiled from our own histories, unable to confront a past only manifest as absence.