BY FELICIA FEASTER
Creative Loafing
Published 08.07.02

From 1996 to 1998, Atlanta-based artist Jena Sibille lived in Papua New Guinea as a Peace Corp volunteer, teaching sex education to the locals. The artworks on display at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center Gallery through Aug. 30 reflect some of the dark and fascinating realities of women's lives in Papua. Sibille's sensitive, finely rendered drawings and paintings of local women are executed on tapa cloth, a material synonymous with women's labor in that country. Tapa is fashioned from the inner bark of trees into cloth for burial shrouds and clothing. The resemblance of the cloth to skin gives Sibille's work its haunting edge, intensified by the melancholy expressions of some of the women from her host village depicted in the work.

Although the title of the show, From Inside the Women's House, refers to the segregated living conditions of women in traditional Papua New Guinea culture, Sibille found that the locals shared an emphasis on family and heritage, which is often lacking in our culture. "In a lot of ways, women really have this incredible bonding and connection" says Sibille.

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