Pollux Awardee

Maternal Mitochondria’s project “Original Face: In the Water” is a part of the 19th Edition of the Pollux Awards, which will be followed by a show at FotoNostrum’s gallery in December of 2023. All of the winners in various categories can be found here. Look for us in Non-Professional: Nude and Figure!

“Original Face” is a long-term photography project documenting the female members of my family and placing them in collaged environments which speak to the sublime, the doors of life and death opening and closing, and the perspective of the hidden v the seen. When the male gaze is removed, what is left? Is this the female gaze, the gaze of the self-portrait? Who is the subject and who is the object. What does it mean to have a self, a no self, an existential void within an embodied subject.

This project was made in collaboration with my mother, the poet Miriam Sagan. We work together as “Maternal Mitochondria,” handing the camera back and forth, writing back and forth. Therefore the patriarchal hierarchy of artistic endeavor is broken, and the matrilineal line is strengthened. This is how we see ourselves and each other. This is how we see.

Upcoming Shows

My “Original Face” photography series will be in 3 shows this spring: On the Edge with Art League Rhode Island, Eros and Thanatos with Buckham Gallery in Flint, MI, and Women’s Works at the Old Courthouse Arts Center in Woodstock, Illinois 📸🎨

On The Edge: An Open International Juried Photography Exhibition

Original Face

This photocollage series is part of an ongoing investigation into the body as self. Two of the three photographs were in gallery shows themed on the topics of women & gender, Art as Advocacy: Promoting Equity and Social Justice for Women (Illinois) and enGENDERing Change (Colorado).

Project statement-

This project addresses certain existential questions about the female
body, ranging from using the “selfie” format to photographing dementia.
Simone de Beauvoir speaks of “the strange ambiguity of existence made
body,” so this exploration hopes to address that ambiguity by exploring
the relationship between the viewer and the viewed, between the face and
the camera lens, the audience and the photograph. Each person who was
photographed was also struggling with an invisible disability. Issues of
the body and the self are compounded when that body is seen as a
betrayal, through the lens of body dysphoria, or as antagonistic to the
spirit. What is hidden v. what is shown is a theme that runs throughout
the work. What does it mean to be who you were before you were born?
What does it mean to have a female body? A disabled body? A body with a
familial lineage, within a societal context? We hope to address these
questions while remaining open-ended.

black fire white fire

amphora

when God made me, He made me broken

Art as Advocacy: Promoting Equity and Social Justice for Women

Some of my photocollage work will be in a show at the Springfield Art Association in Springfield, Illinois! I’m quite excited, I’ll have two pieces there.

Art as Advocacy: Promoting Equity and Social Justice for Women

Reception and awards presentation on Friday, September 6th from 5:30 to 7:30 PM with the awards presentation at 6:30.

The show will run from September 6-28, 2019.