My work is a celebration of youth, where the young are the champions of change in flawed social, political, and environmental landscapes. Faced with ever-mounting global change, the young have the knowledge to understand what is at stake and—with their increasingly powerful voices—the ability to rearrange the balance of power. To shift this balance visually, my subjects wear masks and costumes that augment their agency and the space they take up. Originally prompted by folk carnivals celebrating the arrival of spring, I employ found images and objects along with homemade costumes to portray figures modest in composition but heroic in execution. Through a process starting with collage, isolated images function as vocabulary, deconstructing visual truths and reconstructing them into stories that call for action. Using imagery from the White House to Chernobyl, icebergs to abandoned ships, I work at the intersection of the current reality and the possibility of change to tell a story of hope in a landscape of despair—with armor-clad youth standing in the path of destruction.

Artist Biography:

Tamera Avery is a painter living and working in San Francisco who has exhibited widely across California, including at the De Young Museum. After an early career at the intersection of business and fashion, she turned to painting full-time, working with key artist-mentors at the San Francisco Art Institute and UC Berkeley Extension school. She is represented by Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, California.