Tabula Rosa

Hammond works with an encyclopedic range of imagery in her collages, both physically cut out from found materials and digital collages like this one. Here, she uses the dorsal side of her body as a “blank slate”—the term on which the title puns—for the accumulation of imagery recalling a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. Speaking to the complexity of identity and the wisdom contained within a body, the composition allows one to make associations without pinning down concrete meanings. Magic tricks, a seated Buddha, flora, fauna, and various renderings of snowflakes are among the signifiers that appear. The juxtaposition of pastel colors and a sepia-tone photograph suggests an anachronism, or an inversion of chronology, with the living subject presented in a more historical photographic medium than the inanimate objects that adorn it.