Between Origin and Present consists of both a series of prints and an installation component. The objective of these two bodies of work is to complete a tracing, be it of the past or the present, to hopefully understand our complicated world. The work addresses a need to recover an imagery’s origins by finding similarities and differences between cultures and to search for a source of identity through an exploration in pattern. It is also about trying to understand ornament as a visual language, and, ultimately through this use of pattern, explore how cultures influence and affect each other.

Teresa Cole created “Curling in on itself,” the installation centerpiece of the show, in India during the Khoj Kolkata International Artist Residency. Through the work, she is examining the malleability of sensory knowledge by layering enlarged marks and magnified views. The result is the formation of relationships between abstraction and representation, the simple and the complex, confusion and order. The piece was most recently on display at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans. Funding for Curling was provided by the Tulane University Office of Academic Affairs and the Mellon Foundation. This work was also made possible by the generous support of the George Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust and the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University.