The Disappearance of Bertha Jones – My Dress Hangs There continues Manning’s exploration of disappearance, belonging, and the quiet resistance found in nature. The title, a nod to Frida Kahlo’s My Dress Hangs There, speaks to the tension between visibility and erasure, autonomy and expectation—particularly for women and those who feel out of step with dominant societal rhythms.

The dress in question is the one Manning wore while painting herself into the forest—an earlier act of blending with the landscape, dissolving the boundaries between body and environment. Now, the empty garment hangs in a tree, swaying gently in the breeze. The wearer is gone. What remains is a trace—a ghost of presence, a memory held by fabric and movement.

Suspended in the natural world, the dress becomes both relic and witness. It marks a moment of transformation, where the artist’s desire to disappear into nature—to escape the gaze, the noise, the need to explain—becomes embodied in the absence of the self. Yet it is not a disappearance into nothingness, but into something larger, more rooted. Into the forest. Into silence. Into ease.

As with much of Manning’s work, this piece invites a slow, reflective encounter. It holds space for anyone who has ever wanted to step outside of expectation, to become part of something wilder and more forgiving. It is both an offering and a quiet act of reclamation.