Carolle Benitah at the Brooklyn Museum
Gender and Nation in Europe, Selections from the Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl Photography Collection exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, March 8-July 7 2024
In the Now explores and challenges traditional categories of gender, nation, and photography, featuring works made since 2000 by women artists born or working in Europe. Many artists contend with representations of the body, with individual perspectives on beauty, femininity, objectification, and what it means to be an artist who identifies as a woman today. Though born or based in Europe, these artists may or may not locate their practices geographically or in accordance with nationalistic assumptions around identity. Finally, the wide-ranging material and conceptual approaches testify to the expediting force of technology, which has made photography subject to greater circulation, alteration, and abstraction. Selected from the collection of Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl—donated to LACMA and the Brooklyn Museum in 2021—the exhibition suggests that women photographers practicing in Europe today are global citizens pointing toward a future in which limiting statements can yield to productive questions.
Ernesto Bazan "Raw Poetry" at Art Museum of the Americas - September 29, 2023 - January 2024
The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas, with the support of the Permanent Mission of the United States to the OAS, announces Raw Poetry: Ernesto Bazan and Cuba. Born and raised in Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily, photographer Ernesto Bazan arrived in Cuba in 1992. He remained there for fourteen years, until being forced to leave in 2006. From this period on the island, Bazan produced three photographic books: Bazan Cuba, Al Campo, and Isla. In 2016, Bazan unexpectedly returned to Cuba in the wake of the death of Fidel Castro. From his 2016 visits, he produced his fourth book, 25 de Noviembre. This exhibition highlights works included in 25 de Noviembre and features photographs from throughout Bazan’s time in Cuba.
For Bazan, the photographic exploration inspired by Cuba and its people sustained marriage and parenthood and survived exile and return. His photographs of Cuba examine the complicated love and longing that he has felt for the island. They represent a rare, extended vision of a unique place and its people, among whom Bazan lived, loved, and worked.