FAMILY REUNION: NANCY LARREW’S “ROOTS” 

By Peter Frank

The “family tree,” that diagram that reconstructs the web of familial inter-organization over generations, grows down as readily as it grows up. If it follows a m/patrilineage from a single ancient source, it spreads like a banyan, its branches splaying infinitely as they reach the bottom of the structure. Conversely, if the diagram aims at a certain contemporary figure, a single ultimate individual who has resulted from centuries of coupling, it narrows as it flows south until the network of ancestry results in that particular human being. The conundrum here is that, whether in the individual’s family tree or that of the collective families, the growth is downward – and, of course, in a real tree, the growth is upward. Thus, a “family tree” is in truth the tracing of family roots.

Nancy Larrew’s current investigation of her “roots” silently acknowledges this irony: our heritage goes into us, it does not come out of us. Each of us is a summation – even as each of us is a potential starting point. We do not create ourselves, biologically or socially; at best, we only modify ourselves. As those modifications perpetuate – or not – they affect the fate of our descendants. But they also reflect upon what our ancestors gave us (or, if you would, left us with). It is their genealogy under the gun, and we are the site of that contention.

 This proposes an active engagement with one’s own inheritance, and the investigation that Larrew simply calls “Roots” is nothing if not active. It is not necessarily critical: it takes the less-than-stellar reputations of certain forerunners, and the less-than-saintly behavior of certain family members known to the artist, as the folly of individuals, not as generic traits. The laudable achievements of other (or the selfsame) folks on the tree are similarly noted but not highlighted. It’s all history, Larrew tacitly demonstrates. The lesson learned is not one of human behavior but of human endurance. We are the species that can retrace its lineage(s). We are the species whose social needs and habits require that sense of descendancy. We are the species caught in the infinite mirror.

 This exhibition summarizes Larrew’s investigation – or, if you will, contemplation – of family matters to date. Fittingly, its centerpiece is Roots, a sprawling installation of manifold humanoid figures, 256 in all, arranged around a tree hung from above. The tree is swathed in quilt hand-sewn by the artist’s father’s mother – a sort of heirloom in apotheosis. It is a polysectional object in other ways as well, built as it is of branches from several arboreal species – in this context, a sort of meta-tree reflecting in extremis the variety of cell and character we look for in inherited human traits.

 Arranged beneath and around the literalized “family tree” are exactly 256 simplified figurines, each bearing a number (in lieu of a name?), fashioned this time by Larrew herself. At that quantity, the figures represent Larrew’s family going back 7 generations (i.e., her 5th-great-grandparents). The numerical implications stretch out vastly – as does the origin of our species. Larrew marvels at the familial expanse that goes into the composition of one individual, and mulls that expanse less as an infinite forest than as a network of sentient beings – choosing to see, even count, the trees rather than the forest. “I can barely imagine,” she writes, “let alone comprehend, the staggering numbers involved in tracing our existence to the beginning of civilization.”

A smaller sculpture, U5b2, also makes use of Larrew’s featureless figurines, but this time only looks back, well past seven generations and to the beginnings of Homo sapiens. The title refers to the overarching haplogroup – i.e., collection of common inherited genes – that identifies Larrew, and me, and you, and much of our species as descended from a “Mitochondrial Eve,” an early woman living tens of thousands of years ago in east Africa. The cousins Larrew has here colored black, white, and beige ride a red boat, a metaphor for both the human journey and the biological one. In effect, Larrew retells the Biblical myth of Noah, focusing this time on the survival of the human species. Indeed, the three colors can be attributed to the offspring of Shem, Ham, and Japheth – sons of Noah, distant grandsons of Mitochondrial Eve. “Eve determined the origin of the people,” Larrew notes, “Adam determined the color of the boat.” (Another related work, The Chosen Ones, exploits the literalized notion of “people of color” for aesthetic purposes, avoiding social commentary without masking it.)

 The biochemical key to the species – and the family, and the individual – is, of course, the double ladder helix binding one DNA-packed chromosome to another. In Heirloom Larrew pays homage to the genes that make us who and what we are, encasing a double helix in a mirrored box and affixing to it the word “trauma.” In other words, no biological inheritance is without its booby traps – and some of those traps, physical, mental, social, may not have been in the recipe as long as others. The idea of extraneous influence on inherited characteristics was once dismissed by the scientific community, but it is no longer the realm of crackpot pseudo-science: many traumas, from radiation to starvation, leave their mark – and their metaphoric counterparts, suffered by persecuted groups and even individuals, reflect traumatic influence as well. How, for instance, will the pandemic scar us?

 From the scientific vantage point Larrew assumes in these pieces, one wonders if we are little more than walking experiments, each of us the result of (more or less) sexual encounters that pre-determine the arcs of our lives. But Larrew, far from assuming the Creator’s position, makes heritage as much the result of intimate as of chemical interaction. The personal is the biological, this group of work avers. The large painting Dancing With Ghosts, and the several “miniature” heads she has also painted, concern Larrew’s personal experiences, “memories and interactions with people who have made an impression on my life.” Memories fade, or, rather, they blur, but they leave their mark, tattoos on the psyche and the heart. 

 In this regard, especially, families are veritable cauldrons of memory, much of them less blurred than buried. Researching the “Roots” project, Larrew constantly thought of her immediate family – her mother, a strong personality, in particular (whom the artist immortalizes as the feisty bird at the center of Family Gallery), but also her siblings and cousins and extended web of relatives. Family Baggage honors this blood network with sly humor and scrapbook symbolism. Larrew indicates her family excelled at retail therapy, hence the shopping bags; but the patterns on which the photo-transferred portraits rest also code fond (or at least bemused) memories.

 Some of what Larrew uncovered in her research fits snugly in the annals of (especially American) history, as the display of a published LaRue family history, accompanied with a tree derived therefrom, shows. But, as noted, some of her discoveries are a bit on the hairy side. These she acknowledges (but does not divulge) in the poignant, eerie, forlorn Secrets, a dollhouse-like demon-snare that keeps the sins and missteps of the fathers and mothers in permanent murk. Lit from within, the images flicker in the windows, ever-restless ghosts…

Nancy Larrew conjures ghosts even as she excavates blood lines. The personal may not be the biochemical, but it shapes us no less. Do we pass down our neuroses through our DNA or through our behavior? Both, of course, but how much does one impact the other – and how much does it impact others? Larrew wants to know herself better by knowing us better, a doubly daunting task. But it’s the kind of impossible and tantalizing quest that art was made for, so it can go on for generations, if we do.

Los Angeles

September 2021