Krista

Creative Conversations/digital: Krista Svalbonas with Peggy Sue Amison

Saturday, May 22 | 12PM 

Artist Krista Svalbonas joins Artistic Director of East Wing in Doha, Qatar, Peggy Sue Amison, for an in-depth discussion on Svalbonas’s series What Remains (2020–), which is included in FotoFest’s current exhibition, Public Life: Home and the people who live there.

Svalbonas’s series What Remains (2020–) is comprised of black and white architectural photographs of Soviet-era residential buildings in Latvia and Lithuania overlain with traditional Baltic textile patterns. Weaving these patterns was an important and defiant act during Soviet occupation, done despite the regime’s attempts to suppress Baltic cultures. By juxtaposing the textile patterns with Soviet structures, Svalbonas proposes that the forced imposition of politically-motivated cultural ideology is oppressive, leaving little room for personal and traditional expression. For the artist, the textiles are a reminder of the ways in which those who are forced to live within strict political boundaries can resist hegemony and hold on to their personal cultural identities.

About the guests
Krista Svalbonas (b. 1977, USA ) holds a BFA Photography (Syracuse University) and an MFA Interdisciplinary (SUNY New Paltz). Her work has been exhibited in a number of exhibitions including at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, Klompching Gallery and ISE Cultural Foundation in New York.  Her work has been collected in a number of private collections, as well as the Cesis Art Museum in Latvia. Recent awards include the Rhonda Wilson Award (2017), Puffin Foundation Grant (2016) and a Bemis Fellowship (2015) among others. In 2015 Svalbonas exhibited a solo installation at the Spartanburg Art Museum in South Carolina. She is an assistant professor of photography at St. Joseph’s University. She lives and works in Philadelphia.

Peggy Sue Amison is the Artistic Director of East Wing in Doha, Qatar. Amison has a long history of collaborating with numerous emerging and established international photographers, festivals, and publications. As the artistic director of East Wing, a platform for international photography, she supports the development of new and innovative photography. She has curated exhibitions in cities across Europe, the United States, and China and has written for photographic publications and multiple artist catalogues. Amison is a founding board member for Belfast Photo Festival, Northern Ireland and is the former artistic director of Sirius Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland. Originally from the United States, Amison currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Image: Krista Svalbonas, What Remains 1, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.