Amazu, the title of this mixed-media series, comes from the Iboid language of Nigeria. It means “no one knows everything.”

Each piece is done in large panoramic format with painting, drawing, scissor cut forms, and fragments of mass media images. Sometimes a piece begins with painting and the images follow; sometimes the reverse occurs.

Working in my studio surrounded by the layers of images I've collected, I often think of “The Aleph,” a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, in which a man discovers beneath the stairs of a house, a tiny spinning ball,"…a point in space that contains all other points…everything in the universe seen from every angle simultaneously." Collage allows me to merge my interests—from cosmology to politics to mass culture---simultaneously with my thoughts and emotions. Not quite everything in the universe, but no one knows everything.

Lisa Fromartz