Hilma’s Ghost

78 Drawings & Installation, 2021

ABSTRACT FUTURES TAROT by Hilma’s Ghost is a collaborative project between Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray. Together, the artists created 78 original drawings for an original Tarot deck and 5 paintings that are based on Tarot readings from the deck. The duo’s abstract Tarot deck responds to the original Rider-Waite deck, which is the most popular deck in distribution in the world today. Illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, the Rider-Waite deck harbors the occult belief systems that prevailed in both America and Europe throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is commonly held to be the first deck used solely for the purposes of divination. More than a century later, Brooklyn-based artists, Tegeder and Ray, have taken an abstract lens to the cards’ rich symbolism to interpret their signs and symbols to generate divinatory meanings that can be unlocked through an interpretation of abstract forms, while honoring an overlooked woman artist’s achievements. 

Both Tegeder and Ray are well versed in western and non-western abstraction, with Tegeder pulling from Bauhausian and Minimalist traditions, and Ray from spiritual and esoteric forms from South Asia, as well as the patterning and craft traditions of its textiles. Within the drawings, these dynamic systems of colors, shapes, and compositional elements entwine to express a culturally hybrid form of abstraction that is both daring and experimental. The artists worked together for more than 500 hours, blending their distinct styles, to construct the 5 paintings and 78 drawings for the Tarot deck. The original drawings are done on Fabriano Murillo paper with a combination of gouache, ink, and colored pencils and are directly proportional in size to the Tarot card dimensions. The paintings were created from Tarot readings from the deck. The duo used the readings as a compositional tool for the paintings, which are made from acrylic, flashe, spray paint, and ink on stretched canvas. After the paintings were complete, Sarah Potter, a professional witch and tarot reader, performed readings of the paintings which are now the titles of the works.