Hear photographers Poulomi Desai, Othello De’Souza-Hartley, Sonal Kantaria, Ope Lori and Dexter McLean talk about their work in Care | Contagion | Community – Self & Other and join in the question and answer session afterwards.
Initiated during the first national lockdown in spring 2020, Autograph commissioned ten visual artists to create new work responding to the wider contexts of the Covid-19 crisis. Using primarily photography and film, the artists reflect carefully and critically, often very personally, on the impact of the pandemic, their lived experiences, and the inevitability of change.
Copies of the new anthology published by Autograph to accompany the exhibition will be on sale for the special exhibition price of £20 (RRP £30) and can be signed by the artists.
Care | Contagion | Community — Self & Other is an Autograph touring exhibition curated by Renée Mussai, Mark Sealy and Bindi Vora.
Free event, all welcome, drop-in.
Top image: Ope Lori, film still [detail] from the commission The Lines Between Us, 2020
Artists
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Poulomi Desai
Poulomi Desai is a multimedia artist whose activist community-based practice often utilises performance, language, photography, and sound to create art advocacy projects. For Care | Contagion | Community — Self & Other, Desai created a series of images inoculated with bacteria, considering how we might attempt to control the uncontrollable. View her commission 'Our cultures are the portals - the gateways between one world and the next' at https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/poulomi-desai
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Othello De’Souza-Hartley
Othello De’Souza-Hartley is a visual artist whose artistic vocabulary encompasses photography, film, performance, sound, drawing and painting. Working across multiple interdisciplinary platforms, his practice is concerned with ideas around the human body as a site of embodiment, often engaging with self-portraiture, masculinity and vulnerability as visually performed ideas. For Care | Contagion | Community — Self & Other, De’Souza-Hartley reflected on the notion of stillness, loss and how to navigate grief in his series 'Blind, but I can See', read more at https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/othello-de-souza-hartley
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Sonal Kantaria
Sonal Kantaria is a British Indian visual artist whose practice explores themes of movement, settlement, representation, and cultural identity. Her interdisciplinary research-led practice is concerned with history, trauma, and memory, investigating different forms of resistance through photography, video and text. Kantaria's commission Ghar considers what 'home' might mean during a global pandemic and how it relates to her cultural heritage. Read more at https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/sonal-kantaria
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Ope Lori
Ope Lori works across visual arts, activism, and academia, using lens-based media to investigate politics of difference, often in relation to cultural and sexual identity. Her research-led practice, which includes writing as well as image-making, invites viewers to question power dynamics in both private and public spheres, routinely challenging societal stereotypes, and myths. Ope Lori created two film works for the project, a performative exploration centred on a shared lineage of philosophy between father and daughter. View The Lines Between Us / I, Becoming You at https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/ope-lori
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Dexter McLean
Dexter McLean is a photographer whose socially engaged practice is concerned with the representation of black and disabled communities. Drawing from his own lived experiences, he creates photographic portraits that emphasise the challenges and societal myths disabled people face in contemporary society. McLean reflected on the impact Covid-19 has had on the community that surrounds him in his day-to-day life in his commission. View his series Untitled at https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/dexter-mclean
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