Vigilance, Struggle, Pride: Through Her Eyes
Marina Paulenka
Organ Vida Photography Association
Contributing Artists Ahlam Shibli, Amak Mahmoodian, April Gertler, Hannah Starkey, Laia Abril, Lua Ribeira, Nina Berman, Nina Mangalanayagam, Nydia Blas, Sandra Vitaljić, Tasneem Alsultan, Tomoko Sawada and Zanele Muholi.
Softcover
Print Run of 400
170 x 240 mm
2018
ISBN 9789535868255
VIGILANCE, STRUGGLE, PRIDE: THROUGH HER EYES presents thirteen women artists whose carefully selected works reflect, question and problematize different cultural expressions and issues related to identity, family and home, sexuality and gender-sex roles, representation of women and politics of the female gaze. Their experiences and research pose questions that enable different intellectual and emotional responses to the existing challenges and issues of today’s society. Different in approach, the works reflect the representation of different cultural expressions, tackling issues such as the construction of identity, family and home, sexuality and gender-sex roles, representation of women, politics of the female gaze and self-perception, labor and social rights as well as victimization of women and children, accepting the inability to fully understand and engage with a given situation, but also inspiring change and creating alternative spaces that welcome equal opportunities, narratives and outcomes. The artists Nina Mangalanayagam, Ahlam Shibli und April Gertler will be present during opening.
Aware of the lack of documentation of her community, Zanele Muholi started working on a series of portraits, aiming, in a way, to rewrite the black queer and trans visual history of South Africa. Brave Beauties represents transwomen and gender non-binary individuals with a celebratory view on the body and politics of expression. Ahlam Shibli has always been intrigued by the topic of home. Her work Death demonstrates the limited ways of making meaning from the representation of those that are absent, namely, people who lost their lives as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In her video installation We call Her Pulle, Nina Mangalanayagam portrays her intimate relationship with her aunt Pulle. They are two women of two different generations who do not share the language, culture or experience, and she wants to show how difficult it is to understand someone else’s trauma after they had experienced war.
(source: http://www.photography-in.berlin/kubipro-co-kunstquartier-bethanien-vigilance-struggle-pride-through-her-eyes/)
About the Artist
Marina Paulenka’s professional and personal achievements reveal her commitment to bringing photography to a wider audience and developing the medium. At the age of 22 Marina founded the Photographic Association Organ Vida in Zagreb with the intention of organising events dedicated to photography, exhibitions and gatherings for artists. These events soon gave birth to the photography festival Organ Vida.
Locally oriented at first, the event quickly took on an international character in response to the growing interest of the professional community. In 2019, after being the Artistic Director of Organ Vida for ten years, Marina received the Lucie Award for best curator / exhibition of the year.
Marina holds a MA in Photography from the University of Zagreb and brings experience from curating exhibitions, teaching at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb, and serving as a jury member, nominator and portfolio reviewer on numerous projects. As an artist working with photography herself, Marina knows the medium inside out.
In 2019 Paulenka succeeded Emilia van Lynden as Artistic Director of the Amsterdam based annual photography fair, Unseen before it closed and subsequently began working as an independent curator, artist and educator.
(source: https://formatfestival.com/participant/marina-paulenka/)
About the Publisher
ORGAN VIDA is a biannual international photography festival that takes place in Zagreb, Croatia. Titled “no tears left to cry”, the 12th edition of Organ Vida is dedicated to exploring the various manifestations of feeling in contemporary society. Focusing on the social dimension of feeling, Organ Vida presents artwork that channels the prevalent negative feelings such as apathy or anxiety, as well as artwork that presents affective alternatives to it, explores and/or imagines different affective dimensions of dis/u/topias, imagination and fantasy.
The festival gathers international contemporary artists who work with the medium of photography and/or its expanded form and whose work broadens the conventional understanding of photography by exploring the ways in which other mediums and technologies are expanding and enriching the photographic realm.
ovfestival.org
(source: https://ovfestival.org/)
