Lori Field: Tiger Tarot

September 10, 2022–January 1, 2023

Lori Field: Tiger Tarot is a multidisciplinary exhibition centered on tarot cards the artist created during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. This exhibition is the first solo museum show for Lori Field (b. 1955), a resident of Montclair, NJ. Known for her mysterious modern-day fairytales in multiple mediums, Field employs a reoccurring cast of human and animal hybrids to explore themes of identity, vulnerability, and spirituality. Her characters, predominantly female or androgynous, serve as foils or narrators.

Preview the Exhibition
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Lori Field's collage titled 'Hanged Woman.'
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Lori Field's collage titled 'Hierophant.'

With the tiger as her talisman, Field envisions her tarot as representing a subversive and emerging feminine concept of power.  Of her Tiger Tarot, Field states, “tigers are symbolic of a fierce, true inner capacity to survive and rule over their own nature. They take the chaos of the world and create their own space that is protective, and royal.” For Field, the tiger is a bridge between civilizations of the past and the survival of our own.

Though the oldest surviving tarot cards date to the early 1400s in Italy, their imagery points to much earlier forms of mysticism and esoteric philosophies—including Hindu Tantra, the Gnostic Gospels, Celtic paganism, early Kabbalah, and even pre-Islamic Arabia. All these ancient cultures had one thing in common: an archetypal feminine-centered faith.

Organized by guest curator, Kathy Imlay, the exhibition is designed to reflect Field’s aesthetic, as well as her obsessive imagery and practice. Featuring over 60 works of art in 12 mediums, Lori Field: Tiger Tarot aims to take the viewer on a journey of divination...at once humorous, irreverent, poetic, and profound.

Images: 

The Hanged Woman, 2021. Mixed media collage on paper 10.5 x 7.5 in. Framed 12.5 x 9.5 in. Collection of the artist, LF photograph

The Hierophant, 2021. Mixed media collage on paper 10.25 x 7.75 in. Framed 12.5 x 10 in. Collection of the artist, LF photograph

Lori Field: Tiger Tarot is made possible with generous support from the Lyn and Glenn Reiter Endowed Special Exhibition Fund, the Susan V. Bershad Charitable Fund, Cynthia Corhan-Aitken and Murray Aitken, Patti and Jimmy Elliott, Tracy Higgins and James Leitner, Christine James and Nick DeToustain, Toni LeQuire-Schott and Newton B. Schott, Jr., Amy and Don Putman, Ellen and Jonathan Sander, Cheryl and Marc Slutzky, Margo and Frank Walter, and Joan and Donald Zief.

All MAM programs are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, The Vance Wall Foundation, Partners for Health Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Museum members.