We are pleased to present the 2017 Guest Curators Showcases of our 13th Edition.
- December 9th – 7.30pm
“PHOTOGRAPHY & PLACE” is showcasing a selection of talented photographers from all around the world. Curated by Wawi Navarroza as one of the official guest curators.; at BAMBU STAGE
- December 11th – 8pm
“ANTHROPOCENIC MINDSCAPES” is exploring the idea of the human race and its co-existence with natural surroundings. Curated by Anshika Varma as one of the official guest curators; at BAMBU STAGE
2017 Guest Curator: Wawi Navarroza
Wawi Navarroza is a Filipino contemporary artist known for her works in photography. As a young photographer, Navarroza was one of the workshop scholarship awardees at the inaugural Angkor Photography Festival in 2005 which has been instrumental in defining the trajectory of her practice. Navarroza’s approach to photography is malleable, less and less as a documentarian but rather as an author of a visual language she creates and assembles in pictures. Her body of work is expressed in a combination of tableaus, portraiture, still life and installation through a process informed by research and also largely by referential use of materials. In recent years, Navarroza has followed a cycle focused on depicting notions of looking at contemporary landscape seen from an experiential self-reflexive point of view. Her works investigate displacements, disorientation, discovery and the idea of shifting locations as response to the surrounding environment.
Her work has been shown in institutions such as the National Museum of the Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Singapore Art Museum 8Q, Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery, Hangaram Museum, Korea, National Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, and Fries Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum Belvedere, Netherlands, among others. Navarroza has received a number of awards such as the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Grant New York, Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Thirteen Artists Awards, Ateneo Art Awards, Lumi Photographic Art Awards Helsinki, and was finalist for Singapore Museum Signature Art Prize, WMA Commission Hong Kong. As of press time, she is currently nominated for Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2018.
Her art has been surveyed in books such as “Photography Today” (Phaidon) and “Contemporary Photography in Asia” (Prestel). She’s been a strong proponent of the printed format as an extension of artistic work and with this, has published two books “DOMINION” and “Hunt & Gather, Terraria”. In 2015, she founded Thousandfold, a platform and library for contemporary photography and photobooks in Manila, Philippines.
In the past few years, she has been based in Spain where she completed her Masters scholarship for Fine Art Photography in Madrid. Currently, she is working in Manila, with an active presence abroad. Her works are represented by Silverlens Galleries and will be shown at ArtBaselHK in 2018.
Wawi also sings for rock band The Late Isabel.
Curational Note “PHOTOGRAPHY & PLACE”
The presentation generously looks at an observation particular with the medium—that, eversince and ongoing, Photography has been tied to the hip with Place . There is always a “Where” (…was the photo taken ?) . There is photography’s index finger pointing to somewhere, about somewhere, about what is happening somewhere . And then, there are image-makers who choose to reimagine a place, to delineate, collect, intervene, abstract, or introduce an alternative landscape (as in the interior, etc.) . Quite telling of our times, more than ever, photographers continue to expound both the real and heterotopic places that mark, locate, dislocate our shifting notions of space, belonging, border, boundaries, and the beyond . The photographers I have invited work in different modalities of photography: documentary, fine art, post-photography and has various contexts and presentations . Seen from a rough survey around the globe, the selected photographers wether they are based in the country they are working/living/born in or not, are no strangers to being itinerants, transnationals, frequent flyers, situated the middle of things as they happen, recording it, moving with it, questioning it, creating their places.
Wawi Navarroza, Manila-Paris-Madrid 2017
EVENING PROJECTION “PHOTOGRAPHY & PLACE”/
GUEST CURATOR – WAWI NAVARROZA
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2017 Guest Curator: Anshika Varma
Anshika is a freelance documentary photographer, whose photographs are a means of exploring social and cultural changes in structures within communities. Her projects have been exhibited through various galleries in India, Italy and New York. Her works have been published by various national and international media such as The Sunday Guardian, National Geographic, Time Out, Tehelka, The Rolling Stones, Vogue and People Magazine.
She has also worked on various book projects with the HCL Foundation, Mahindra Rise, Vodafone Foundation, Roli Books, Hachette Publishing (India), Random House (India) and The Tehelka Foundation.
Curational Note “ANTHROPOCENIC MINDSCAPES”
Anthropocenic mindscapes is a reassertion of the complex relationship between the human mind and our natural environment. This relationship is often simplified by limiting natures’ presence in our lives as a transactional commodity. It exists only just to provide for us. Our environmental concerns become statistical data, waiting to be analyzed, processed and categorized. In context of the global environmental concerns we are facing today, it becomes imperative to renegotiate with nature by also acknowledging it’s psychological impact on our lives.
The curation approaches these issues through personal connections that photographers have experienced with their surroundings. It looks at the effects of natural elements on our collective identities: building communities, feeding religions, mythologies and fantasies; defining features of our species. By acknowledging that the changes on earth can be classified through observation of human behavior, we are forced to reassess our ideas of progress. Can we be convinced to draw new parameters to define development?
EVENING PROJECTION “ANTHROPOCENIC MINDSCAPES”/
GUEST CURATOR – ANSHIKA VARMA
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