Dena Hawes

Collaborative Installation
Montgomery College Arts Center, Takoma Park, MD
Collaboration with Lisa Kaftori and Fransisco Felipe

Eve: A True Story 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 recast 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.