I explore the construction of selfhood by tracing familial influence through matrilineage. Beyond both genetics and physiology, “inherited” gestures, tendencies, patterns, and word choices are passed down through repeated exposure and imitation, rather than being taught, echoing those who came before and shaping the selves we inhabit.

In Mops, an everyday domestic tool becomes a sculpture meditation on repetition and a surreal reminder of the ghostly presence and absence felt by a long legacy. I constructed each mop from wood, paint, 400 feet of cotton rope and over 10 pounds of concrete. Each mop head is created with 120 circular wrappings, a gesture that echoes handcrafts passed down through generations of women.

Gathered in multiples of three, their numbers capture ideas of continuity and transformation, referencing the archetypal trinity of Grandmother, Mother, and Daughter or Ancestral, Present, and Emerging aspects of the self.

Their gravity-defying forms suggest a task interrupted. The frozen gestures take on a ghostly presence, as though the absent bodies who once performed these motions still linger in the room. Their presence is made visible through absence. In this work, an ordinary task is ritualized, carrying forward traces of ancestry and the quiet weight of inheritance.

-Pam Korman, 2026

About the Exhibition

The Woodmere Annual exhibition presents the work of Philadelphia’s contemporary artists. Each year, a different juror prepares a call for artists, soliciting submissions related to a distinct theme or idea. This year’s juror, Ron Tarver, invites makers to submit works that reflect on the theme of Family.

Family can be an inheritance, a chosen community, a structure of care, a site of rupture, or even a collection of salient objects. Definitions of family may be intimate or expansive, encompassing close personal bonds and broader conceptions of collective family across time and place.

For Woodmere's 83rd Annual Juried Exhibition, presented in dialogue with the exhibition Arc of Promise, celebrating the USA's 250th anniversary, the juror invites artists to submit works that engage the theme of family. How do families shape individual and collective identities, including national ones? How can ideas of kinship, responsibility, and belonging contribute to nation-building?

About the Juror

Ron Tarver has spent nearly 50 years creating photo essays on subjects from double-Dutch jump rope to the 1980s crack epidemic, Black architecture, veterans, and cowboys. His recent work appropriates his father's midcentury photographs to address today's racial climate.

Tarver holds a BA from Northeastern State University and an MFA from the University of the Arts. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pew Fellowship, two Independence Foundation Fellowships, and NEA funding. As a Philadelphia Inquirer staff photojournalist for 32 years, Tarver shared the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for documenting school violence and received three additional Pulitzer nominations, plus awards from World Press Photos, Society of Professional Journalists, and National Press Photographers Association.

His work has appeared in National Geographic, Life, Time, and other major publications. He co-authored We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans (Harper Collins, 2004) and The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America, which debuted as Amazon's number one release in 2024, and received seven awards from independent publishing organizations.

Tarver’s photographs have been exhibited widely, with more than 30 solo and 50 group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and are held in major collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He currently serves as Associate Professor and Chair of Art at Swarthmore College and is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery.