Cloverdale Arts Alliance Presents James William Moore's Madame B's Tarot Readings

Eight vivid tarot-style artworks from Madame B’s Tarot Readings by James William Moore are arranged in two rows on a pink damask background, including figures, symbols, and ornate card frames.

Image from Madame B’s Tarot Readings, a photographic tarot series by James William Moore exploring identity, symbolism, camp, and transformation.

Madame B’s Tarot Readings invites viewers into a world of glamour, mystery, satire, and self-discovery through images that started as photographs.

Madame B exists in a space where glamour, illusion, fear, and self-invention collide. The work is deeply invested in the performative nature of identity—how we are seen, how we construct ourselves.”

— James William Moore

CLOVERDALE, CA, UNITED STATES, April 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Cloverdale Arts Alliance is pleased to welcome Madame B’s Tarot Readings, an exhibition by guest artist James William Moore, on view from May 16 through July 12.

This vibrant installation features works from Moore’s ongoing photographic tarot series, bringing together portraiture, costume, storytelling, and theatrical style in a visually rich exploration of identity, transformation, and queer experience. Centered on the characters from Madame B’s personal tarot deck, the series uses the familiar language of tarot to invite viewers into a world of mystery, glamour, symbolism, and self-invention—while also making room for wit, satire, and a knowing sense of play.

Madame B first appeared in Moore’s short horror film, Inner Fears: Portrait of the Teller’s Fortune and has since grown into a larger creative universe. Initially a series of self-portraits of the artist as fortune teller, Madam B’s tarot characters explore ideas of identity, performance, vulnerability, fear, and power. At the same time, the work embraces appropriation, exaggeration, and camp as creative tools, using humor to both celebrate and gently unsettle the archetypes and visual traditions it draws from.

The exhibition is both playful and layered, blending theatricality, satire, and visual storytelling in ways that invite viewers to look again. Familiar symbols from the classic Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck are reimagined with a wink, and images that may first appear dramatic or mystical often carry an undercurrent of irony, mischief, and theatrical excess. At its heart, Madame B’s Tarot Readings invites transformation, self-expression, and the freedom to exist beyond narrow expectations—while recognizing that performance, artifice, and even humor can reveal truths of their own.

“Madame B exists in a space where glamour, illusion, fear, and self-invention collide,” says Moore. “The work is deeply invested in the performative nature of identity—how we are seen, how we construct ourselves, and how image can become a site of both protection and revelation.”

“Mr. Moore takes an unusual approach to images that we think we know well,” said Will McCoy, Gallery Director at Cloverdale Arts Alliance. “His work is at once funny, thoughtful, and hard-hitting, and it represents many of the ideals we strive for in our gallery and community. The Cloverdale Arts Alliance is honored that we have the opportunity to host the largest collection of his tarot card work presented to date.”

Visitors are invited to experience a body of work that is visually bold, emotionally resonant, and unafraid to balance spectacle with sincerity, humor with tension, and fantasy with reflection.

Exhibition Details
Exhibition: Madame B’s Tarot Readings
Artist: James William Moore
Venue: Cloverdale Arts Alliance
Dates: May 16 – July 12

For additional information, gallery hours, and related programming, please visit Cloverdale Arts Alliance at https://www.cloverdaleartsalliance.org/

About the Artist

James William Moore is a photographer, artist, curator, educator, and host of the podcasts Lattes & Art and Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, both presented by J-Squared Atelier. Rooted in photography, his work always begins with the camera, then expands beyond it without limitation—moving into digital media, staged imagery, installation, and other visually layered forms. Through this process, Moore explores identity, narrative, and cultural symbolism using camp, kitsch, theatricality, and appropriation to create works that hover between sincerity and satire, artifice and truth.

James William Moore
Cloverdale Art Alliance
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