FotoFest Biennial 2020 opens with “African Cosmologies”
“African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other”, on view March 8 – April 19, features 33 artists including renowned and emerging ones, from historic work from mid-last century to contemporary ones. The exhibition is held in the Arts District Houston, in two adjacent warehouses, namely Silver Street Studios and Winter Street Studios.
This central exhibition and the related six-weeks programme wants to link notions of blackness to the specific geographic and chronological context by examining the complexity of the relationship between contemporary life in Africa, the African diaspora, global histories of colonialism, human rights and representation. In order to reach this goal, the exhibition has been curated by Mark Sealy, director of Autograph ABP, an organisation founded in 1988 to support black photographic practices through— the exploration of themes such as identity, representation, human rights and social justice.
The Curator stresses the urge to free the way we are used to conceive the “objectivity” of photographic images “Photography for those locked out of the means of image production becomes an impossible barrier to the right to full and equal human recognition. The establishment of a canonical reading of photography is a decidedly European affair and is in no way universal or democratic. From the beginning, photography was wrapped up in the violence and colonialism of Europe and Africa. I hope this will let us explore who owns photography, and how different histories are now coming to the fore.”
Therefore, this year’s focus continues the organisation’s mission to advance a decolonised view of the world promoting a broader understanding of photography. Given the complexity and broadness of the chosen theme, the exhibition does not aim at being exhaustive nor encyclopaedic, but constitute one of the largest surveys of contemporary African photography ever presented in the United States, including also some of the artists that exhibited their work at FotoFest in the past editions.
“FotoFest has a strong reputation for working on a global scale, and focusing its biennial on themes, regions, and artists deserving of greater attention. More than that, we have a history of creating a space for the artists to address their concerns directly. It is a platform that serves artists and their voices.” Stated Steven Evans, FotoFest Executive Director.
