FotofestCuratorialTour(117of134)

If I Had a Hammer Tour with Steven Evans

Saturday, November 5 | 11AM

Silver Street Studios and Winter Street Studios

2000 Edwards St. Houston, TX 77007

Join co-curator and FotoFest Executive Director Steven Evans for an in-depth curatorial tour of the FotoFest Biennial 2022 exhibition, If I Had a Hammer. Evans will discuss 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.

This program is free and open to the public, but space is limited. Visit the link below to register.

About If I Had a Hammer
The FotoFest Biennial 2022 central exhibition, If I Had a Hammer, considers the ways artists utilize images to explore the formation of historical narratives, political ideology, and agency. The artists featured in If I Had a Hammer question the role of images in the construction, depiction, reception, and repression of global social movements and political ideologies, and represent a diverse range of image-makers, including photo-documentarians, activists, research-based artists and collectives, filmmakers, performance artists, and artists working in social practice.

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 Steven Evans

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.

FotoFest Biennial 2022 Media Sponsor:

Glasstire

Image: Curatorial Tour of the FotoFest Biennial 2022 If I Had a Hammer with Executive Director Steven Evans. Houston, TX. Courtesy of FotoFest. Image: Tere Garcia.