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Conversations With Myself
Jo Ann Chaus, April 6 2021 (additional text by Debra Klomp Ching)

After seven years of documenting and exploring my relationships with and within my family of origin, in 2016 I self-published the work Sweetie & Hansom, and began the current series of self-portraits, Conversations with Myself, in which I dress and perform as a mid century woman, appropriating the garb and demeanor of my mother's generation.

As I inhabited each character, I personified and interpreted the burdens I believed they carried, indoctrinated by expectations and social mores of that era. In truth, I recognized my own discord and incongruity embedded in the traditional roles and self-imposed constraints I'd assumed as wife, mother and woman. My latent voice emerged regarding the rights of all to contribute freely, with respect and consideration, to the conversation and the business of reaching one's potential and living a full life.

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Jo Ann Chaus, Conversations With Myself
Aline Smithson, March 18, 2020

What are we really considering when we photograph ourselves? Often a self-portrait is a way of examining one’s own journey, allowing for psychological considerations of self. In the case of Jo Ann Chaus, her series, Conversations with Myself instead considers the collective experience of womanhood using color and light-infused performative tableaux to create and mirror inner states of being. The photographs hearken to another era when women struggled to have a voice, instead relying on an inner narrative that did not match their exterior selves. Conversations with Myself is family album that holds memory, myth, and magic.

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EXHIBITION: PHOTO EYE GALLERY

Work from my Conversations With Myself series have been selected for the group exhibition, Fractured, on view at the Photo Eye Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am one of 25 artists juried into the exhibition, which opened with a reception on February 28th, 5–7pm.

Exhibition Dates: February 28 – May 23, 2020.

EXHIBITION: BEACON ARTS

A selection of 21 photographs from my series Conversations With Myself  was recently on view at The Howland Cultural Center in Beacon. The group exhibition—featuring four artists—was called The Sympathetic Eye and was curated by Susan Keiser. The exhibition opened with a wonderful and well-attended opening reception on the afternoon of January 4th, and was on view until January 27th. More information about the exhibition is available in the catalogue.