From the outset, Jemima Yabes’s practice has shown a commitment to the unnoticed. Her painterly concern with life often catches it at its most unassuming: like a gumamela in quiet bloom, a dog sleeping, or pork carcass hung to dry and tenderize. Inconspicuous life forms in wonted states—a practice that pauses, ponders, and pays heed to what is otherwise overlooked.
The present exhibition, Sanctuary for the Strays, is another act of patient notice for Yabes. The impetus came from Animal Memorials, a photographic series by anthropologist, photographer, and conservationist Amanda Stronza. A lifelong undertaking for Stronza, the series documents the memorials she has created for the dead animals she has encountered along her way. Roads, trails, and backyards, among these.
In the images, their bodies are seen moved to quiet places of rest, laid in a solemn array, and adorned with flowers, leaves, and branches. Stronza explains that the “intention is to honor the individual life,” remembering the “feelings and memories, fears and follies, journeys” that the animals have lived and lost.
Sanctuary for the Strays thus signifies an extension of the movement’s intent in painterly form. But while Yabes echoes the core of Stronza’s intention, she departs from it by commemorating animals not only in death—but most importantly—in living as well. The exhibition succinctly expresses this through its centerpiece—a canvas bearing a cat and an injured bird in slumber, surrounded by smaller works of flowers in different quantities and stages of bloom. All these are beings well alive, whether captured in a state of rest, healing, or growth.
Departing from Stronza who reveres death upon death, Yabes honors life through the living. Altogether, Sanctuary for the Strays marks the artist’s abiding care for the lives we overlook—embracing all lives in their fullness, in whichever states and shapes they may take.
Chesca Santiago
