Grifa Negra y Vibras Trenzadas is an abstract diptych withdrawn from Thomas Eakins' Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) 1875, wherein a white, stately figure is dramatically operating on a grotesque victim in front of an audience of onlookers within a darkened panopticon. The diptych translates figurative symbols from a surgical theatre, into vulnerable landscapes sprawling across flesh toned domestic textiles with layered with window drapery.

Flora Aura cast landscape paintings considers fertility culture across reproductive and climate crisis in the Americas: a complicated historical, political, and geographic context wherein conquering the tropical landscape and diasporic women’s bodies stem from a colonial Eurocentric legacy.

Tropical landscape foliage resembling the putrid red pigment in Eakins' painting is ripped from the surface of the interior drapery fabrics of the diptych. Resulting forms are a torn habitat of palm fronds cast in glistening fuscia, scarlet and iridescent light. Drips radiate from a Sabal Palm cast that protrudes in front of a salmon glowing fabric. A textured window curtain is braided, then billows out of its rigid frame. Partnered with a beige skin tone drapery linen, the adjacent painting is bunched and buckling beneath the weight of its austere frame, as though muscled out of its anthropomorphic dimensions.

The diptych is part of an immersive installation of Coralina Rodriguez Meyer solo show at Thomas Jefferson University Helix Gallery Iris Crepusculas y Pupilas Madrugadas on view November 15 - December 13 2024.

Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)
1875 Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/299524