“There is a brazen intimacy with these self-depictions, but also a sense of remove or alienation. With these works, Tabouret places herself in a lineage of women painters who have produced bravura self-portraiture, including seventeenth-century artists Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Judith Leyster. At risk of oversimplification of a complex historical topic, one might say that, while excluded from the use of male models in studio practice, women turned to the most accessible and accommodating sitter: themselves. The result is most disarming, candid – and somehow, turns us, viewers, into the artist: surreptitiously, this act of looking inwards, into ourselves, becomes ours, through an unexplainable act of transfer, Tabouret offers us the means to slip inside her gaze – we gain access to our selves through her gaze.”
—Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History, Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries at Hunter College
