Month: April 2024

On 15th August 2021, the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, precisely 20 years after their expulsion in 2001. While their return was widely expected, the pace at which it occurred caught many off guard with the Taliban entering Kabul before U.S. and NATO forces had fully withdrawn. A chaotic evacuation occurred; embassies scrambled to extract their staff while Afghan citizens desperately attempted to gain access to the limited airlifts taking place. The scenes at Kabul airport contained echoes of history, the 1975 fall of Saigon ringing in the ears of many.

Following these events, Hashem Shakeri travelled to Afghanistan, arriving after the international news media had largely moved on to other stories. His images capture daily life as the country readjusts to life under the Taliban. An atmosphere of both uncertainty and ambiguity can be felt; an end to 20 years of conflict yet the return of restrictions and the ongoing threat of violence. His images avoid the monumental, instead focusing on how communities survive in the wake of global history.

About Hashem Shakeri

Hashem Shakeri is an artist, photographer and filmmaker based in Tehran. He creates slow documentary projects that study the aftermath of global histories and ideologies. His work has been published by The Sunday Time, The New York Times, The New Yorker and the British Journal of Photography, amongst others. He is the recipient of multiple awards including: the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (shortlist, 2020), Reportage Grant from Getty Images (2019), POYi’s World Understanding Award (2017), the Lucas Dolega Award (2016) and the Ian Parry Scholarship (Commended, 2015). His work has been presented in group exhibitions including: Paris Photo (2018) and Recontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2017). This exhibition will be his first solo show in the UK.

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Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah will be in residence in Bristol’s Georgian House Museum, creating a new body of work in relation to the building’s colonial history. Built in the late 18th century, Georgian House is best known as the home of John Pinney (1740 – 1818), a wealthy sugar merchant and slave holder; yet was also home to Pero Jones (1753-1793) and Fanny Coker (1767-1820), both of whom were born into slavery and brought to Bristol by the Pinney family. Adu-Sanyah’s commission will respond to these histories. 

About Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah

Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah is a German-Ghanaian artist and photographer based in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work centres upon the colour darkroom, where she uses the materials of photography – paper, light and time – to investigate familial bonds, personal loss, identity and structures of institutional power. The work created emphasises the process of its making; particularly the journey from initial ideas and research research to the creation of a photographic object that is imbued with feeling and emotion.

She has held exhibitions across Europe, including: Centre Photographie Genéve (CH), Photoforum Pasquart (CH), Saarland Museum (DE) & Foam Museum (NL). Her work is held in the permanent collections of both the city and canton of Zurich, the Swiss Photography Foundation (Fotostiftung Schweiz), Fotomuseum Winterthur and the city of Saarbrücken. In 2024, she was the recipient of the Swiss Art Award. She is the author of one monograph, Rough Tide (edition fink, 2024).

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Since 2016, Sarker Protick has been studying the remnants of colonial architecture found strewn across the Bengal region. His images draw attention to abandoned Zamindar houses, once occupied by landlords – the middlemen of empire – who were assigned the task of extracting rent from rural tenants. This system of extraction began in the 16^th Century under the Mughal Empire, only to be further consolidated by the British. Following the partition of India, Bengal was split with West Bengal forming part of the new Indian state, while East Bengal became East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. The Zamindar houses were abandoned as those in charge saw their power quickly fade.

Spaces of Separation speaks to the history of Bengal and the ongoing dance of people, place and power. The project is also about the act of listening itself, understanding how the past is always present, both in the surrounding landscape as well as in the lives of all who are shaped by history. It is a meditation on collective memory and the role it might play in society today.

About Sarker Protick

Working with photography, video and sound, Sarker Protick’s works are built on long-term surveys of Bangladesh. He is drawn to themes such as time passing, the alteration of land and borders, as well as traces of both personal and political histories. Protick is a lecturer at the South Asian Media Institute Pathshala, and co-curator of Chobi Mela, the longest running international photography festival in Asia. As an artist he has received multiple awards and fellowships, including Joop Swart Masterclass, Foam Talent, Light Work Residency, Magnum Foundation Fund and the World Press Photo Award. He is represented by Shrine Empire, Delhi.

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In this new work premiering at the Festival, Bristol-based artist Amak Mahmoodian examines the experience of dreaming for individuals living in exile. Working with 16 collaborators, all of whom are exiled from their native countries, Mahmoodian uses photography, poetry, drawing and video to explore the new lives created through dreams, as well as the ways in which dreaming enables individuals to return to a past that cannot be reached while awake. The title, One Hundred and Twenty Minutes, refers to the average time a person spends dreaming each night. The project was supported and commissioned by Multistory and D6: Culture in Transit.

About Amak Mahmoodian

Working with photography, text, video, drawing and archives, Mahmoodian’s artistic practice explores the representation of gender, identity and displacement, weaving connections between the personal and the political. She has published two books: Shenasnameh (RRB & IC Visual Lab, 2016), which was shortlisted for the First Author Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles; and Zanjir (RRB, 2019), which was the winner of the Photo Text Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles. Mahmoodian completed a practice-based doctorate in photography at the University of South Wales (2015) and currently works as a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England. 

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In Monument, Trent Parke brings together images produced over a 25 year period on the streets of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia. Upon moving to Sydney from a small Australian country town, Parke’s first impression was of the sheer volume of people. At rush hour he would watch as the city’s workers moved in mass, walking the great conveyor belt of life. The more Parke photographed the rush hour, the more he was drawn to the light, following the sun as it shifted from one street corner to another, all the while trying to make sense of the endless procession in front of him. Monument stands as an elegy to time, to the late light of city streets and to the movement of people, as well as to the circling of moths as night falls. 

“At night I would watch the eclipse of moths, millions of them constantly circling the lights of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. At the same time, on my balcony, a miniature performance played out around the light above my head. The moths inevitably and without resistance were drawn to their ultimate demise. Spiralling out of control, like small space-ships caught in a tractor beam. An electrical charge in the still air. A small puff of smoke. Gone. Instant disintegration of a life form. Another blip in the universe. Another small space craft colliding with the blazing sun.” – Trent Parke

About Trent Parke:

Trent Parke was born in 1971 and raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. He began taking pictures as a child, using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic camera and the family laundry room as a darkroom. He started his career in Photojournalism, becoming the first Australian member of Magnum Photos in 2007. Today Parke is known for his impressionistic, long-form projects that offer a portrait of contemporary Australia; from southern outback to crowded beaches and city streets. While rooted in the documentary tradition, Parke bridges the gaps between reality and fiction, exploring themes of identity, place, community and family life.

Parke’s work has been exhibited widely and is held in major institutional collections, including: the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Art Gallery of South Australia. He has published seven books, including: Dream/Life (1999), The Seventh Wave (with Narelle Autio, 2000), Minutes to Midnight (2013), The Christmas Tree Bucket (2014), Crimson Line (2020), Cue the Sun (2022) and Monument (2023). He is the recipient of 3 World Press Photo Awards alongside the W. Eugene Smith grant for humanistic photography.

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Kirsty Mackay has been working collaboratively with communities across England, documenting the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and the realities of poverty in the world’s 6th largest economy. The resulting project looks at how systematic inequality is manifested via government policy, access to resources, geographies of exclusion, and multigenerational experiences of trauma. 

The Magic Money Tree is produced in collaboration with New Art Gallery Walsall (2024). A publication of the work is forthcoming with Bluecoat Press. 

About Kirsty Mackay

Born in Glasgow and based in Bristol, Kirsty Mackay is a photographic artist, educator, activist and filmmaker. Her research-led documentary practice examines issues of gender, class and discrimination. Her last book, The Fish That Never Swam (2021) was an elegy to her hometown of Glasgow, and the fallout of 1970s housing developments that led to the fragmentation of working-class communities and neighbourhoods. 

Her work has been exhibited both nationally & internationally, including in the recent survey exhibition Facing Britain (2022, international touring) alongside works by Martin Parr, Anna Fox & David Hurn. 

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