Mortality is a subject that people often treat as taboo. Perhaps that is why it is so popular in the art world—people address death to bring awareness to all of the faults of humanity. However, the world is not entirely hopeless.  Like wildlife receiving nutrients from a decomposing animal, the world has its methods of recovering and growing. This heroic rise from defeat—this rebirth—is what Mary Aldridge chooses to explore through her art.“Rebirth”—what Aldridge sees as life ascending from bad situations—is something that she naturally gravitates toward in her art.

This is illustrated through her show “Tomorrow”, featuring a human skeleton curved into the classical Ouroboros shape—a snake biting its own tail. Ouroboros symbolizes rebirth and the circle of life.

Using this subject as well as the circle, Aldridge creates a message that life will continue on after humanity is gone. With a bird on the skeleton’s hip and a nest with an egg and baby bird inside of the rib cage, it insists upon having hope for the future. In all that the world is suffering right now—when humanity is gone “Tomorrow”, the world will continue on and flourish in its absence.