Art Facing a New World — at the Capa Center

How can art contribute to a more sustainable post-pandemic future? This is the question addressed in the exhibitions 'A Forged and Delicate Future and Of this World — Envisioning Alternative Cartographies', on show at the Capa Center between August 18 and September 19. The eleven lens-based artists featured in the exhibitions come from all over the world, including China, the United States, Brazil, and Europe. Their works reflect on the guiding thematic framework of PARALLEL — European Photography Platform’s 4th cycle: changing times: art facing a new world.”

Created in 2017, PARALLEL is a network of creative organizations that aims to facilitate cross-cultural exchanges between creators and institutions and to provide mentoring and showcasing opportunities across Europe. As one of PARALLEL’s seventeen participant institutions, the Capa Center has contributed to organizing several programs, including the closing exhibitions of the program’s 4th cycle between August 18 and September 19, entitled 'A Forged and Delicate Future and of this World — Envisioning Alternative Cartographies'.

Through their work, the artists in 'Of This World' reimagine our geopolitical landscape by producing alternative cartographies. They draw upon personal and political histories to trace the interconnectedness of subjectivity and geography. Probing private and public spaces, their work explores how identities are continually negotiated through contact with space and place. Each artist approaches maps as living documents in continual evolution, subject to scrutiny and revision. Collectively, their work reveals how cartographic practices might foster new forms of knowledge and systems of meaning-making. The five artist projects presented reveal how art not only confronts a new world, but also how it can help construct one.

'A Forged and Delicate Future' features five artists who reconstruct past-and-present-day ephemera to navigate the world’s fragile state of being and cast new visions of reality. Driven by the global rise of misinformation and ecological failures, these artists mine the past to unearth the gritty, obfuscated layers of the present day. Rather than photographing their immediate surroundings, these artists employ a physical archive, often resting between the highly personal and foreign. This medium of found documentation — which is heavily associated with memory — can take the form of newspapers, family photo albums, letters, social media comments and even invasive plant species. By twisting, stretching, and rearranging archival combinations of text and image, a more precarious and nuanced future emerges.