© Kija Lucas. Objects to Remember You By: An Index of Sentiment, vitrine #7, Archival Pigment Print 32x74", 2014-2020

The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy, a roving photography exhibition Kija Lucas, showcases the emotional power of objects – those we cherish and those we carry that house memory and meaning.

When my wife and I prepared to move from San Francisco to Berkeley nearly three years ago, I paused to think about one of the items that sits on my desk: a small, painted wooden bird sculpture that fits comfortably in the palm of my hand. This orange, black, and turquoise token has been with me for 35 years. I vividly recall the face of the young woman who offered it as a parting gift at the end of her eighth-grade birthday party. Ann’s genuine smile suggested that I - a mouthy, atheist social outcast with unpopular opinions about Utah’s dominant religion - was welcome in a cool girl’s house.

Why do we hold onto objects that are emotionally potent, but carry no monetary value?

Whether the associated memories are happy or sad, why do we accept the material burden that the items pose?

These are two of the underlying questions that shape photographer Kija Lucas’s project The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy (MoST), Lucas’s crowd-sourced project visually coalesces sentimental objects brought in by participants. Looking at the large composite prints, it’s alluring to speculate about the objects and the strangers who possess them. Lucas resists that pull, thinking instead about wider contexts, particularly archiving as a remnant of settler-colonialism.

I spoke with Lucas about the project, which is on view at California Institute of Integral Studies through May 16th, its origin, and how it eludes familiar institutional archival practices and the resulting production of knowledge.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Kija Lucas

PostedMay 5, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists

TagsThe Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy, Roula Seikaly, Kija Lucas, New Photography, photography and the archive, conceptual photography, California Institute of Integral Studies

Artist and curator Zachary Francois speaks with photographers from “Something's Missing,” an exhibition and photobook curated to reframe the expectations of Black artists today.

When I first conceived “Something’s Missing,” my immediate response was that I needed to approach the exhibition as tastefully and respectfully as humanly possible. It wasn’t just a show of Black photographers’ lovely and intense work, it was also a moment to break the mold of what it means to be a Black artist today, and to have one’s work cared for by a curator who shares the same canon. We are often lumped together in our practices simply by our shared identity, our individuality removed. “Something’s Missing” became the vessel to replace the myth of universal cultural experience with something more nuanced.

I want people to critically engage with these artists without preconceived ideas of what a Black artist is and should look like. I see these ideas as a function of white supremacy and hold no power to constructively engage with Black artists. I hope galleries and institutions take note of how critical it is that curators of color lead, look over, and facilitate shows that come from shared cultural identities because it causes the artists to be heard and seen sincerely.

Zachary Francois in conversation with Juanese Davis, Benjamin Willis, and Kelli Mckinney
(editors’ note: the conversation was conducted after the exhibition at The Bakery Atlanta closed, but you can purchase a catalog by DM’ing Zachary Francois thru Instagram.

PostedApril 25, 2021

AuthorZachary Francois

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists, interviews

TagsZachary Francois, Something's MIssing, Juanese Davis, Benjamin Willis, Kelli Mckinney, Black renaissance, contemporary Black artists, new photography, contemporary photography, emerging photographers, Soft Lightning Studio

Ice #41 © Meghann Riepenhoff from the series Ice — Ice #41 © Meghann Riepenhoff from the series *Ice*

Humble Arts Foundation and Strange Fire Collective are collaboratively curating two online group shows of photography that responds to the complex psychological impacts of environmental change.

FOUR DEGREES refers to the predicted 4°C raise in our average global temperature by the end of the century. While climate change may have a universal impact, these effects are felt unequally across different communities and cultures. Those who do not experience it immediately in their daily lives may only understand such environmental transformations in the abstract. Those living directly in the shadow of impending man-made and naturally occurring disasters, meanwhile, may experience chronic anxiety. And many, still, may altogether disavow the human consequences of climate change.

Fear, indifference, anxiety, fatigue, and denial: these represent only partially the full range of reactions and responses to impending environmental futures. Yet taken as a whole, they speak to the predictive strangeness of responding to an uncertain future.

In this open call, we invite submissions of photo-based work that engages with the affective, emotional, and subjective aspects of environmental change. We encourage submissions from a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, communities, and political perspectives.

This two-part online exhibition will be collaboratively curated by Strange Fire Collective’s InHae Yap and Keavy Handley-Byrne, and Humble Arts Foundation’s Roula Seikaly and Jon Feinstein.

Guidelines:

PostedApril 22, 2021

AuthorEditors

CategoriesExhibitions, Open Call

Tagsopen call, photography and climate change, eco-anxiety, Strange Fire Collective, Humble Open Call, Humble Arts Foundation, photography open call, socially concerned photography, Meghann Riepenhoff, InHae Yap, Roula Seikaly, Keavy Handley-Byrne, Jon Feinstein

Bread (Cross), 2017. Archival Pigment Print. 24 x 30” © Eli Durst

Eli Durst’s ”The Community” hovers a haunting line between what is real, what is imagined, and what falls somewhere in between.

Photographers often consider themselves storytellers. Amongst many photographers of his generation, the work of Eli Durst proposes a new definition of narrative and the documentary photograph; one more sprawling and supple and interpretive without the self-imposed ethic of ‘objectivity, without pious obligations to fact. The work slithers through loopholes of fact and fiction, and with disarming sleight of hand and stealth presence, accumulating evidence and masking visible purpose.

Looking at a photograph from The Community can feel as if walking into the wrong apartment, suspended in a social fabric without clear definition (nor even the certainty that one is still in the general present). The work disorients while seeming very, very familiar. Durst is a folklorist of our self-absorbed, flattened, culture; the eternal middle-brow.

Durst’s solo exhibition of The Community is on view at Foley Gallery through April 4th.

Stephen Frailey in conversation with Eli Durst

PostedApril 2, 2021

AuthorStephen Frailey

Categoriesinterviews, Exhibitions, Artists, Art News, Galleries

TagsEli Durst, photographic truth, Narrative Photography, contemporary black and white photography, Stephen Frailey, Foley Gallery, Michael Foley, photographic tableaux, religion and photography

No Cars Go © Kriss Munsya from The Eraser — No Cars Go © Kriss Munsya from *The Eraser*

Kriss Munsya's ongoing photographic series The Eraser uses stylized tableaus and long-form poetic captions to reflect, erase, and resolve longstanding trauma.

At first glance, Kriss Munsya's highly stylized narrative portraits might come across as fashion editorials. A family basking in bright LA-feeling light, their faces obscured by flowers. A figure lying across a mid-century modern cabinet. A closeup of a face bedazzled in reflective circles. A car broken down in a parking lot, yet lit immaculately and also covered in elaborate floral arrangements. But there's a deeper story here. One seeped in pain, doubt, guilt, and an ongoing burden of racism – and trying to erase it.

Kriss Munsya was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Belgium at an early age where he felt othered by the white community, yet developed a sense of guilt for having a limited number of Black friends, and never dating Black women. Munsya channels these feelings into colorful pastiches that borrow and remix his memories, pairing them with long-form part-biographical, part-fiction narrative captions (which we’ve included below,) written in the third person to help him process it all.

A longtime fan of his work on Instagram, I connected with Munsya amidst his two latest exhibitions – up through the end of February in Vancouver, BC at Pendulum Gallery and online at Oarbt.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Kriss Munsya

PostedFebruary 18, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Exhibitions, interviews

TagsKriss Munsya, Vancouver Artists, The Eraser, contemporary portraiture, contemporary photographic portraiture

This Photography Project Ponders The Sentimental Power of Personal Objects

Challenging the Preconception of What it Means to Be a Black Artist

Open Call – Four Degrees: Eco-Anxiety and Climate Change

A New Photo Series Embraces The Curious Loopholes Between Fact And Fiction

How Bold Colors and Floral Arrangements Can Symbolize Guilt, Pain, and Resolution