{"id":92821,"date":"2025-08-24T04:51:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T04:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/92821\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T04:51:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T04:51:06","slug":"four-photographers-rewrite-the-past-and-imagine-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/92821\/","title":{"rendered":"Four photographers rewrite the past \u2014 and imagine the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this special photography package, four artists imagine fictional pasts and possible futures as a way of questioning the present. Asian-American men lounge along the Hudson River Valley, staking claim to the land their ancestors once worked. Hollywood monsters invade the ethnographic photographs taken by colonial settlers in Brazil, challenging the idea of the \u201calien\u201d. In 20th-century Sweden, a group of sisters sews intricate wedding garments that will never be worn. And the old names of Palestinian villages \u2014 their names before the mass displacement of the 1948 Nakba \u2014 are restored in new maps. Alternative histories suggest alternative futures.<\/p>\n

Alongside these photo essays we present the work of four fiction writers: Sara Baume<\/a>, Vinson Cunningham<\/a>, Yomi \u1e62ode<\/a> and Rebecca Watson<\/a>. Each has written a short story or personal essay in response to a photograph, creating pairings of word and image that are by turns lyrical and spiky, meditative and deeply moving. A photographer\u2019s frozen moment is reanimated by a writer, its characters given an unexpected afterlife on the page.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Griselda Murray Brown<\/p>\n

\u2018A River Once Dreamed\u2019Andrew Kung<\/p>\n

In the series A River Once Dreamed, I recompose the Hudson River School\u2019s romanticised paintings by staging scenes in which the river valley is inhabited by Asian-American men. Each constructed scene challenges the predominant iconography of the American landscape, and recontextualises the relationship between nature and belonging, identity and masculinity, history and erasure.<\/p>\n

Informed by the concept of Manifest Destiny, which held that Americans were chosen by God to expand westwards and colonise the land, previous depictions of the landscape, such as those by the Hudson River School, implied who was able to participate in the natural world and how. Despite major contributions to the landscape, including constructing the Transcontinental Railroad, advancing the nation\u2019s agricultural infrastructure and pledging allegiance in war, Asian migrants and their histories remain largely misrepresented and invisible.<\/p>\n

Through intimate scenes of friendship, the cast of characters is reimagined as cultural citizens of the Hudson River Valley, America\u2019s first iconic landscape. Ultimately, they are contesting the history of land ownership and staking their claim to the American pastoral. <\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Brothers Wrestling in the Rain\u2019 \u00a9 Andrew Kung\"\"\u2018No Trespassing\u2019 \u00a9 Andrew Kung\"\"\u2018Untitled\u2019 \u00a9 Andrew Kung\"\"\u2018Dreaming on the Hudson\u2019 \u00a9 Andrew Kung\"\"\u2018Dreaming on the Hudson\u2019 \u00a9 Andrew Kung\"\"\u00a9 Andrew Kung<\/p>\n

Andrew Kung\u2019s exhibition, \u201cA River Once Dreamed\u201d, will be at Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, Oregon, from November 6-29 <\/p>\n

\u2018Fic\u00e7\u00f5es Coloniais\u2019Denilson Baniwa\"\"\u00a9 Denilson Baniwa\"\"\u00a9 Denilson Baniwa<\/p>\n

I think of King Kong, taken from his land to be displayed as a trophy and a freak, just as the Tupinamb\u00e1 people were taken to Europe and exhibited in public squares. Godzilla, the Loch Ness Monster, the Kraken \u2014 they could all represent what happens when progress advances over forests, rivers and ecosystems. Western stories and cinema imagine alien attacks that destroy cities because that is exactly what the west has done over time, and now it fears a historical revenge. For many of the world\u2019s indigenous peoples, the aliens were once the westerners.<\/p>\n

This work, from the series Fic\u00e7\u00f5es Coloniais (which translates as \u201cColonial Fictions\u201d), is part of a broader practice that reflects on the invention of \u201cBrazil\u201d and the ways in which indigenous peoples have been represented, exoticised and silenced in visual culture. I\u00a0draw from historical accounts, ethnographic archives, popular cinema and contemporary media to weave images that break away from conventional narratives. By placing indigenous perspectives into the visual language of mass culture, from Hollywood blockbusters to advertising, I seek to expose the colonial gaze embedded in these global icons.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a9 Denilson Baniwa\"\"\u00a9 Denilson Baniwa<\/p>\n

Here, I imagine indigenous art as a right of reply, and the right to tell an alternative history of Brazil. I repurpose the icons we have grown used to seeing framed on television screens, in cinemas and on cell phones, icons that are metaphors for the idea of \u201cthe other\u201d. <\/p>\n

By using humour to bring together such diverse, seemingly jarring material, I hope to spark debate on appropriation, image rights and reproduction \u2014 where guaran\u00e1 is originally Sater\u00e9 Maw\u00e9 and popcorn is Guarani.<\/p>\n

This is not only about reclaiming symbols, but about reframing the narratives that shape the way the world sees indigenous cultures past, present and future. <\/p>\n

Denilson Baniwa will be exhibiting as part of \u201cAncestral Futures\u201d at Les Rencontres d\u2019Arles until August 31 and as part of \u201cC\u00e2mbio de Paradigma. Um giro no Brasil\u201d at the Cervantes Institute of Rio de Janeiro until September 3<\/p>\n

\u2018Reimagining Homeland\u2019Samaa Emad\"\"\u00a9 Samma Emad\"\"\u00a9 Samma Emad<\/p>\n

Reimagining Homeland is an artistic project that uses collage to delve into the intricate tapestry of memory and culture in Palestine. It aims to (re)create and (re)imagine the vibrant life of the villages destroyed in the 1948 Nakba, the Arabic name meaning \u201ccatastrophe\u201d, when more than half the Palestinian population were driven from their homes and lands. This project weaves together disparate elements with the aim of fostering dialogue and reconciliation. <\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

The Palestinian narrative is one fraught with struggles for justice, identity and survival amid a landscape marked by displacement and destruction. Reimagining Homeland seeks to engage with these complexities through collage, providing a visual and tactile journey through memory and imagination. Drawing upon archival photographs, oral histories and personal narratives, the work incorporates a diverse range of materials. These materials serve as the building blocks for compositions that capture the essence of Palestinian life and culture, while also reflecting on the impact of conflict and displacement. <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a9 Samma Emad\"\"\u00a9 Samma Emad<\/p>\n

I have selected pictures from the Palestinian archive from the period before the Nakba, pictures of daily practices carried out by Palestinians in their villages. I have included maps of these villages and their old names, which were changed after the occupation. With techniques such as tearing, cutting, layering and stitching, the collages become a medium for exploration, dialogue and healing.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hail Mary, Bobbin Lace, Serpent\u2019s Thread\u2019Emilia Martin\"\"\u2018The two of us\u2019, 2024 \u00a9 Emilia Martin\"\"The army of plenty\u2019, 2024 \u00a9 Emilia Martin <\/p>\n

Growing up partly on my grandparents\u2019 farm in eastern Poland, I spent countless hours observing my grandmother, a rural textile worker, as she sewed, her fingers dancing with needle and thread in a rhythm that skirted between the ordinary and the mythical. \u201cWill you put a thread on for me?\u201d she would say, trusting my younger eyes as though they were an extension of her own. <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u2018Babooshka diptych\u2019, 2025\u00a0 \u00a9 Emilia Martin\"\"\u00a9 Emilia Martin<\/p>\n

Her work, like so much labour categorised as domestic and inherently feminine, was unrecognised, undervalued and dismissed and once she passed away, her textiles were discarded. The project Hail Mary, Bobbin Lace, Serpent\u2019s Thread interweaves her story with that of the Andersson sisters, who, living in Sweden at the dawn of the 20th century, spent their lives creating textiles for their Knottekistje (wedding caskets). Yet four of the five sisters did not marry and their intricate textiles were never used, leaving a complex record of their lives while challenging the definition of textile making as a practical feminine craft with the sole purpose of domestic use. <\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Hands braiding cosmologies\u2019, 2025\u00a0 \u00a9 Emilia Martin \"\"\u2018Mending (fibers and histories)\u2019, 2025\u00a0 \u00a9 Emilia Martin <\/p>\n

Emilia Martin will be exhibiting \u201cI saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears\u201d at the Pictura Gallery in Bloomington, Indiana, in November<\/p>\n

Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend Magazine on X<\/a> and FT Weekend on Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n