61 x 91.4 cm
Eleanor Harwood Gallery is pleased to present Memory Cradle, a two-person exhibition featuring works by Kate Tova and Anastasia Tumanova. Bringing together two Slavic artists working across painting, sculpture, and ceramics, the exhibition explores memory, folklore, craft traditions, and the enduring relationship between the natural world and cultural heritage.
Drawing from Russian and Ukrainian folk traditions, both artists engage ornament, storytelling, and organic form as vessels for emotional and cultural memory. For Kate Tova, the works in Memory Cradle are also informed by the ongoing war in Ukraine, channeling themes of displacement, resilience, mourning. Though distinct in material and approach, Tova and Tumanova each create immersive visual languages rooted in reverence for nature. Their works carry traces of traditional legacies while reimagining them through contemporary sensibilities.
Tova’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, and site-responsive works. Using vibrant color, tactile surfaces, and at times plant material gathered directly from her garden, she investigates the relationship between psychological interiority and the natural environment. Wildflowers recur throughout her work as symbols of healing, renewal, and survival.
Anastasia Tumanova is a Russian-American ceramic artist currently working in Berkeley, California. She captures the spirit of nature by translating its shapes, patterns, textures, and colors into abstract, dimensional artworks and site specific installations that venerate nature's beauty and bring the outdoors inside. Her work is inspired by the flora and natural surroundings of her home in California, as well as traditional Russian craft and folk art. Her background in graphic design informs her meticulous and illustrative handling of clay, resulting in sculptures that feel simultaneously delicate, architectural, and alive.
Together, the artists construct a shared space where folklore, ecology, and personal history intertwine. Memory Cradle considers how cultural memory is carried forward through material, pattern, ritual, and the handmade object, offering a meditation on preservation, transformation, and belonging.
