Chantal Joffe is 49. Youth is behind her. Old age lies ahead. She’s on the seesaw between the two, balancing this way and that, in those unsteady years when you are defined by the things you are not. You’re not young. You’re not old. The only solids are the absences.
I point this out so ungallantly because it’s the overwhelming subject of Joffe’s new exhibition. The entire show is a kind of vanitas project: an extended rumination about the fragile brevity of life. Joffe has always looked at herself and her family — they are the subjects for which she is best known — but never previously has it been so obvious that time and its cursed passage are a dominant concern.
Chantal Joffe’s Big Head, 2019
WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK
Appropriately, the exhibition
