Zinnia Naqvi

Dear Nani, 2017–
inkjet prints, adhesive vinyl solvent prints, vinyl lettering

“As I try to understand these photos, I put myself into the unanswered questions. I try on the role of Nani as well as some of the other contributors to the images. The fictional dialogue between Nani and I attempts to unpack some of the questions surrounding these images, while also asking the viewer to revisit their own reading.” —Zinnia Naqvi

Zinnia Naqvi’s practice, which spans photography, video, writing and archival material, often questions the relationship between authenticity and narrative while dealing with larger themes of colonialism, cultural translation, language and gender. 

In Dear Nani, Naqvi approaches a somewhat mysterious collection of photographs owned by her maternal grandmother, Rhubab Tapal (a.k.a. Nani), taken by Rhubab’s husband, Gulam Abbas Tapal, while on their honeymoon in Pakistan in 1948—a time of upheaval, just one year after the Partition of India. In these photographs, the artist’s grandmother wears multiple outfits that belonged to her husband, who was educated under British colonial rule. Not only is Rhubab performing the role of a man, but she is furthermore performing the role of an Indian man performing the role of a British man—a reflexive, layered narrative that Naqvi uses as her point of departure for the series. 

In the Dear Nani works, Naqvi restages and rephotographs these scenes to summon understanding of her grandmother and the influence of the social and political circumstances that likely informed the original photographs’ creation. In response, the artist created these images and an accompanying fictional dialogue to address gender performance, familial memory and the pervasive effects of colonization. 

Birthe Piontek

Abendlied, 2011–18
archival inkjet prints, adhesive solvent prints, inkjet on poly silk

“Abendlied aims to look at the elements that create a family: not just the genes, but also the stories and secrets, as well as the objects we surround ourselves with. In this series, they become poetic stand-ins for underlying emotions and the ‘unspeakable’ that is unique to each family.” —Birthe Piontek

Birthe Piontek is a photo-based artist born in Germany. Her practice explores the relationship between memory and identity, with a special interest in the topic of female identity and its representation in Western society. While Piontek’s predominant medium is photography, she also uses installation, sculpture and collage to investigate how complex personal identities can be visualized. 

Piontek’s series Abendlied (Evening Song) embodies grief and the artist’s longing to revisit the familial feeling of refuge she experienced in her childhood home. A number of years ago, the artist’s mother was diagnosed with dementia—a devastating illness that ricocheted through their family and caused her parents to move out of their home—and this series of photographs documents the resulting experience. Piontek uses the formal qualities of still life and performative action in her photographs to capture the ineffable emotions that quietly charge domestic environments while exploring gestures of kinship. Abendlied is part of the artist’s process of letting go. 

While this work is personal in nature, the series simultaneously speaks to broader components of identity, evoking questions related to the familial histories of each one of us: How we are shaped by the place we call home, and what effects does the loss of that place have on us? Piontek’s series reminds us that where we come from leaves an indelible mark on our being.  

Vivek Shraya

Trisha, 2016
digital inkjet prints, vinyl lettering

“I just want the chance to put on my mother’s velvet emerald-coloured dress. … I step into the dress and close my eyes. I let her Estée Lauder scent envelop me and feel her like a current of electricity, both warm and fierce. I become her. I am beautiful.”
—Vivek Shraya, God Loves Hair

Vivek Shraya is a trans artist of colour whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre and film to explore issues of gender and racial identity, oppression, pop culture and the intersections between. 

In Trisha, Shraya re-enacts photographs of her mother taken before the artist’s birth. Shraya embodies her mother as a way to navigate their tense relationship, but this photographic recreation is also an act of care that honours her mother’s beauty and femininity. The text component recounts the artist’s early childhood awe of her mother while feeling disconnected from the male identity she was assigned at birth. Through this text and the accompanying images, Shraya weaves together a narrative of herself and her mother that simultaneously renders visible and refuses the heteronormative patriarchal systems that have shaped their relationship and identities. 

Trisha is a reclamation of femininity and a powerful testament to the ties that bind—or estrange—mothers and daughters. Through this work, Shraya seeks a deeper connection to her mother and an understanding of the complexities of gender and family dynamics as they span multiple generations. 

Creative Direction: Vivek Shraya
Photography: Karen Campos Castillo
Makeup: Alanna Chelmick
Hair: Fabio Persico
Clothing: M. Orbe
Set and wardrobe assistants: Shemeena Shraya and Adam Holman

Carol Sawyer

The Scholar’s Study, 2018–
chromogenic prints, video

“The contents of my father’s desk drawers and his inventory of Plexiglass stands, used to display various objects of study, are the chief protagonists in the work—in essence, a kind of fragmentary and poetic portrait in absentia.” —Carol Sawyer

Carol Sawyer is a visual artist and singer who works with photography, installation, video and improvised music. Since the early 1990s, her visual artwork has investigated the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory and history. 

The Scholar’s Study, comprised of both photographs and video, records Sawyer’s process of cataloguing and clearing out the home office of her father, Alan R. Sawyer, a historian of pre-Columbian art. This process took place more than a decade after his death. 

The slow dismantling of Sawyer’s father’s study and the hours spent poring over documents, artifacts and journals echoes her father’s process of gathering evidence through slow observation. The artist’s camera records the absence of her father and memorializes him through objects. Untouched desk drawers containing eyeglasses, stationery, notes and ephemera are placed on the floor and photographed as is, laying bare objects normally hidden away in private spaces. A field notebook is opened to a page containing sketches of pottery fragments, showing the process of learning and examination. Empty Plexiglas stands, meant to display artifacts, here become a symbol of the apparatus of Western scholarship. In the accompanying video, these same stands are mirrored and fragmented—they become otherworldly, addressing the fleeting nature of memory and the effort it takes to cohere it while attempting to understand our not-so-distant past. 

Sawyer’s nonlinear, introspective approach is haunted by the complexities of navigating a strained relationship as well as the disconnection she felt for her father. The Scholar’s Study leaves the viewer with questions about complex familial relationships, the Western obsession with cataloguing and preserving the past, and the histories that shape them both. 

Joi T. Arcand

Through That Which Is Scene, 2010–
mixed media

“Similar to a museum display, viewers are drawn into these tiny moments and invited to experience them as silent observers. And, unlike the nature of memories that enter our minds and in a flash are gone, participants are invited to spend as much time as they like with each image before moving on to the next.”
—Joi T. Arcand

Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory. Her practice, which includes photography, digital collage and graphic design, is characterized by a visionary reclamation and Indigenization of public spaces through the use of Cree language and syllabics. 

Through That Which Is Scene uses the conventions of museological display to present miniature dioramas that disrupt the colonial vision of Indigeneity. Combining cutouts of vintage photographs from the artist’s family collection with toys and other ephemera, Arcand constructs multilayered tableaus that explore memory, family history and her identity as a nēhiyaw woman. This subversive archive does not perform for the settler imagination but rather asserts its presence and alternative narratives. 

Arcand’s ongoing series includes an interactive View-Master reel. Appealing to adults and children alike, these thin cardboard discs contain seven pairs of small, transparent colour photographs on film, which are viewed through a stereoscopic camera to create a three-dimensional image.