Artist Statement

I use photography, mixed media, and digital montage, often in the form of diptychs, to explore the intersections of memory, trauma, and the body. I am interested in how trauma is lodged in the body, and how historical and contemporary culture, medical practices, and politics create narratives around women’s bodies. 

In much of my work I use my own body as both subject and site of inquiry. The images are often obscured, fragmented, or paired, reflecting the emotional logic of dissociation and the nonlinear nature of memory. I incorporate scans of medical records from my own history, text from the collective cultural ether, motifs from the natural world, and images of domestic spaces to ground the work in lived experience. These elements underscore the complexity of how trauma intersects with place, memory, and identity.  

My work seeks to acknowledge the layered narratives we carry within us. I aim to create images that are haunting, beautiful, intimate, and expansive, and that offer space for viewers to reflect on their own experiences of vulnerability, memory, and survival. While personal, my work is not purely autobiographical. Instead, it speaks to a collective, often-silenced experience that resonates across many lives. 

Artist Bio

Suzanne Gainer (she/her) is a lens-based artist whose work spans photography, digital montage, and mixed media college. Rooted in formal explorations of space and feminist inquiries into the body, her practice engages emotional and psychological complexity to articulate experiences that resist language. Gainer holds an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and has recently retired from her academic career at Worcester State University (Worcester MA). 

Her works have been widely exhibited in the US and abroad, including the Danforth Art Museum (Framingham, MA), the Fitchburg Art Museum (Fitchburg, MA), the Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, MA), the Center for Contemporary Arts (Abilene, TX), the SAGE Gallery (Bangkok, Thailand), and the Mediterranean House of Photography (Barcelona, Spain). 

She is the Vice President of the Photographic Resource Center (PRC Boston), and a signature member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA). A solo show of her work will be held at the Danforth Museum in September 2026.

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