FotoFest Biennial 2022: If I Had a Hammer Curatorial Walkthrough
September 25, 2022
Silver Street Studios
2000 Edwards St., Houston, TX 77007
Join co-curators Steven Evans, Max Fields, and Amy Sadao for an in-depth curatorial tour of the FotoFest Biennial 2022 exhibition, If I Had a Hammer. The co-curators will discuss each of the included artists, drawing attention to select works that demonstrate the complex relationships between the production of images and the development of social, cultural, and political ideologies. The tour will begin at Silver Street Studios at entrance 1 and will end at Winter Street Studios. We recommend arriving early to watch the video works on view before the tour begins. A small group of Biennial artists will be in attendance to speak about their work and answer questions posed by the attending audience.
This program is free and open to the public, but space is limited. For information about all FotoFest Biennial 2022 public programs visit fotofest.org/programs or download the FotoFest app on the Google Play or Apple App Store.
About If I Had a Hammer
The FotoFest Biennial 2022 central exhibition, If I Had a Hammer, considers the ways artists utilize images to unpack the ideological underpinnings that inspire collective cultural movements around the globe. Together, the twenty-three included artists propose alternative techniques of seeing and engaging with the world, working with both conventional and new media to shed light on the systems that encourage social theories and political imaginaries to become dogma at the click of a shutter or tap of a button.
If I Had a Hammer explores both artistic and activist interventions into the structures of contemporary image-production, calling attention to how these structures both reflect and inform our perception of the world, historical narratives, and the agency to engage in collective cultural discourse. The exhibition proposes that the systems and structures that support ideological formation such as historical archives, digital media networks, sociopolitical organizing campaigns, and infrastructural and territorial developments, are inextricably linked to the history and development of photography and image technology. Through disparate approaches, the artists in If I Had a Hammer offer strategies to resist and replace legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and systemic violence by exploiting the language and material of image-production and media circulation. In doing so, the artists show how images can be used to both support progressive movements as well as reinforce and bolster systemic inequities.
Learn more here: fotofest.org/fotofest-biennial-2022
About the Co-curators
Steven Evans is a curator, writer, artist, and the Executive Director and curator of the award-winning arts organization FotoFest, based in Houston, Texas. He is responsible for exhibitions and the artistic direction of FotoFest and its Biennial. Among many exhibitions organized for FotoFest and other venues, Evans produced and oversaw the development of the FotoFest Biennial’s central exhibitions for African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other (2020), India: Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art (2018), and Changing Circumstances: Looking at the Future of the Planet (2016). He co-edited the related hardcover books African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other (2020), INDIA (2018), and Changing Circumstances (2016), as well as recent FotoFest publication Velvet Generation (2019). Prior to FotoFest, Evans worked with a wide range of artists and collaborators as managing director of the Dia: Beacon Museum in New York State and as director of the Linda Pace Foundation in San Antonio, Texas. His curatorial work incorporates a range of approaches with a focus on photography, moving image, and new media art.
Max Fields is the Associate Curator and Director of Publishing at FotoFest. He has presented numerous exhibitions and has written for and overseen the production of multiple museum and gallery publications. Recent projects include Public Life (2020–21), African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other (with Mark Sealy, 2020), and Gareth Long: Kidnappers Foil at the Blaffer Art Museum (Houston, 2019–20). His recent exhibition, In Place of an Index, was produced and presented with the 2021 Texas Biennial and was co-curated with Ryan Dennis and Evan Garza.
Amy Sadao received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 1995 and an MA in Comparative Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2000. She was Executive Director of Visual AIDS for the Arts from 2002 to 12 and served as the Daniel W. Dietrich II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia from 2012–19. Sadao lives in Philadelphia and is currently the Program Director for Denniston Hill and has upcoming exhibitions at Columbia University in New York City and REDCAT in Los Angeles.
FotoFest Biennial 2022 Media Sponsor:
Image: Curatorial walkthrough of the FotoFest exhibition In Place of an Index, Houston, TX. Courtesy of FotoFest. Photo: Quit Nguyen.
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