Dena Hawes


Eve's Tattoo

View fullsize0/0


Still Point Theatre 01



University Gallery, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Eve's Tattoo was a collaborative installation intended to address the issue of the denial of women's complex identity in myth, religion and culture.

We were re-interpreting the story of Eve by drawing on non-western mythologies, such as the Native American myth of Turtle, which imagines strong, positive female forces in the universe. In this way, we re-cast Eve as the archetypal woman with a complex relationship to knowledge, healing and spirituality.

Eve has the map of the Garden of Eden tattooed on her back, Eden being the source of all water, and thus of all life. She exists in a continual state of transformation, flowing between the boundaries of the unknown and imagined. She is an island, a lifeboat. Floating in the ocean and underneath the mirage of water, her tattoo appears as both a map and a turtle shell.


Dear Eve,

I saw your tattoo.

It is of the Garden of Eden, and is stretched across your long, sensuous back.
To me, it looked like a mirage, as you laid there, floating in liminal space.
Floating across my primal imagination,
of Noah,
of always floating and never landing.

Across oceans of anticipation.

As I witness atrocities in my everyday life,
I think of you.

I wonder if like you,
I will ever lie in peace, in grace, in surrender.

Yours through eternity,

~Dena




Copyright 2018 Dena Hawes | All Rights Reserved