Creative Conversations/digital: Aida Silvestri

Wednesday, April 22 | 12PM 

This program features Aida Silvestri, an Eritrean artist currently living and working in the UK, whose series Even This Will Pass (2013–2014) is included in the FotoFest Biennial 2020 central exhibition, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other, curated by Mark Sealy.

“Despite quoting the format of portraiture, Aida Silvestri’s Even This Will Pass (2013–2014) is perhaps the most potent pivot away from photographic convention. The artist’s 15 portraits of Eritrean migrants in the UK are so blurred that they have become unrecognizable; Silvestri has further stitched in thread atop their faces the route each subject took to London. (These traumatic journeys are described in detail alongside each image.) Silvestri blurs the photographs to protect her sitters’ rights to anonymity, while also challenging the idea of portraiture – a genre tied to biometric capture and identification documents – by refusing to create images that totalize their subjects, in this case as political migrants. Circumventing this logic of portraiture allows Silvestri to probe a system of representation that has historically ‘othered’ its subjects while providing them the opacity to safely share their stories in the public sphere.” – Andrew Hibbard, Frieze Magazine, March 2020

About the guest

Aida Silvestri (b. 1978) is a UK-based artist whose work explores human rights issues regarding migration, culture, ethnicity, identity, health, politics, and the urban landscape. She holds a BA (First Honors) in photography from the University of Westminster, London. Silvestri’s career spans from documentary, portraiture, and commission work to workshops and talks on the issues with which her work is concerned. Her artistry explores unique approaches to photography. Through her practice, she hopes to raise awareness, give voice to the voiceless, and promote acceptance within communities.

Silvestri has exhibited her work at venues including Autograph ABP, The Photographers’ Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Roman Road, and Mall Galleries, all in London, and abroad in France, Greece, Luxembourg, Taiwan, and Réunion Island. She was voted one of British Journal of Photography’s two Best of Show winners at the Free Range exhibition (2013, London). Silvestri was awarded the Festival Audience 2017 Award and was shortlisted for the European Month of Photography Arendt 2017 Award. Selected publications include British Journal of Photography, Autograph Newspaper, blow photo, Looking for the Clouds: Contemporary Photography in Times of Conflict (European Month of Photography, 2016), Reframing Migration: Lampedusa, Border Spectacle and the Aesthetics of Subversion (Oxford; New York: Peter Lang, 2019), LensCulture, Photoworks, Photomonitor, The Independent, and Time Out among others.