Helena and Eden (2020)
Shèrkènt and Eden (2020)
Helena Michel (2020)

While many of Dumas’s bodies seem to create a constellation of mourning and melancholia triggered by our inevitable collective march to the end, other works seem equally resistant to that reading in their proactive embrace of life.

Whether it is in the intimate and lovingly rendered portraits of her pregnant daughter in Helena Michel (2020) (on view in the first floor rotunda gallery), her son-in-law and grandson in Shèrkènt and Eden (2020), or her daughter and grandson in Helena and Eden (2020), Dumas often takes life (and particularly her own life) into a heartfelt embrace as she creates her work.