Once, a friend pointed out that architecture can function as “a sculptural representation of failed futures.” In this city scarred by absurdities, crises, and injustices, our surroundings offer clues to where we’ve been, to where we’re going. There are “the remnants of the ancient Buddhist caves in Bombay harbour that the Portuguese used for cannon practice.” There are the Neo-Gothic structures, ...

The first thing I seek, when in a new city or old is a statue. Usually a forgotten pedestal for pigeons or winter seagulls, I try to find a whole body in the head. A sculptor once told me sculptures are made from the bottom up, with slabs of clay; the chin for them often went haywire. On the making of faces, he postulates “The chin becomes the legs, stepping out, moving forward.” During one of ...

We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. Julia Gat is a photographer and filmmaker based in Marseille who was featured in Bindi Vora & Justine Ellis Guest Room. We have caught up with her to discuss her ongoing project “Mare Internum”, a photographic essay exploring identity in relation to the seascape of Marseille. The ...

In my work I have always strived to understand the formation and erasure of identity that is an inevitable part of the migrant experience, exploring the resulting fragmentation of family, identity, and culture. Though intensely personal in some ways, Buttons for Eyes looks outward by documenting a story of migration and cultural hybridization that has particular resonance in a political climate ...

Speculating on photographic thresholds and the relationship between generative AI and traditional photography, renowned artist Torbjørn Rødland invites to reflect on the possibilities of action at a time of shifting technologies and hybrid images. Taking mysticism as key, Rødland is curating Der Greif Issue 17 under the title “One Day Soon” towards an exploration of both photography and ...

“In Focus” is a new, quarterly series of reviews in which we hunt down and peruse the worthy publications off the shelves of our community artists. Each month, Der Greif is selecting a set of photobooks from our talents’ pool. Compiled here are the most recent releases from our community artists Erik Gustafsson, Henriette Sabro Ebbessen and Yolanda Y. Liou.

Ukraine Latittude 48.3412° N/Longtitude 28.1200° E June 2023 The Ukraine segment of 4°3: a ritual dance was created in the village of Busha, a geological monument of nature containing traces of Scythian cultures dating to 4800-3000 BC. The visual inspiration for this performance came from the black and white photo paintings I created for the project, one of which was selected for the Guest Room ...

Canada Latitude 52.5175791/Longitude -106.0169777 May 2023 Photography is at the centre of everything I do. Extending the boundaries of its expression and creating multiple channels of entry for the audience are key objectives for me, especially when working on difficult subjects. 4°3: a ritual dance, was certainly one of the most unpredictable and satisfying experiences of the project. Four ...

The intimate portraits, or “photo paintings”, small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, awaited another transformation. This one would free them from my controlled urban studios, transporting them to the poetic landscape of the Canadian prairies, my homeland. Here the highly tangible photo paintings became larger-than-life silk textile sculptures, manifesting the ecological impacts of ...

Working from group photographs, I intuitively selected the children who became the centrepiece of Poems of Our Children. First, I cropped their faces, about the size of a small coin, from group photographs. I then edited and printed the images as black and white digital pigment prints at the scale of an 8x10 portrait. Work then moved to an analogue studio, where the digital prints were ...

We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. Yurian Quintanas Nobel was selected for our Photography Online Only Auction in collaboration with Grisebach Auction House. Quintanas Nobel’s practice makes use of everyday objects and mundane materials to establish a direct contact between creation and reality, rationality and ...

The centre piece of Poems of Our Children is a portrait collection of children impacted by the 1932-1933 Soviet Ukraine famine-genocide, Canada’s 1914-1920 First National Internment Program, and Russia’s 2022 unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. In dealing with atrocities where individuals often cannot be identified, I explore the power of art to transcend individual identity, time, place and even ...

Lay stone on top of stone, build your house: on clay, on hard black soil, pick from the earth's pockets coal and salt. everybody needs a roof for weddings and funerals. - Serhiy Zhadan, excerpt from “How Did We Build Our Houses”, translated by Amelia Glaser Inspired by a time-bending poem by Serhiy Zhadan, Poems of Our Children moves fluidly between Canada and Ukraine, reconnecting sites of ...

Sometimes I want something complex and important. I want to soak up. I want to absorb. I want to digest and ponder. I want to read tiered books, and watch serious films. I want to walk and think. I want to have multi-layered conversations. I work as a receiver. And sometimes that receiver doesn't function as a receiver. During such periods, watching, reading, and listening doesn't work for ...

They say that a schizophrenic never dwells on the question of whether he is schizophrenic. So if you're asking yourself if I'm schizophrenic, it means you're not schizophrenic. Unfortunately, it doesn't work shit like that with talent. You keep asking yourself, am I talented? And it doesn’t give you an answer. There's no need for it. Maybe it's better not to ask, maybe it's better to do all sorts ...

They say that the biggest moth on earth is the Attacus atlas or the Atlas moth - with a wingspan measuring up to 24 cm (9.4 in). And the smallest moth is Stigmella maya with the forewing measuring just 1.2 mm. So I guess self confidence is like a moth - it can be small and it grows, sometimes it grows big and beautiful. It’s always fragile. And that moth is never bigger than yourself. You can’t ...

It so happened in my life that I ended up on the island of Sri Lanka and lived here for almost two years. In the Eastern province of the island I saw a lot of cows with big and sometimes huge letters and numbers on their sides. It turned out to be a way of local branding cows - it’s called hot iron branding. And it’s very big - sometimes it covers the whole body of an animal. I started to film ...

We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. We’re catching up with Niccolò Quaresima, whose work was featured in Mirjam Kooiman & Dominic Hawgood’s Guest Room in 2021. In the vibrant space of Viafarini-In-Residence in Milan, Italy, Quaresima’s wall hangs some deformed images printed on plexiglass. Images take over ...

Back then I had a Leica R4, I loved that camera. Oh, it was a match - when you hold something in your hands and it lives together with you, it becomes a part of you. And you enjoy walking together. It didn’t happen with just any camera. Thanks to my friend and photographer Yakov Titov, who taught me a lot and let me test and hold different cameras in my hands, I realized that there are just ...

In love with silence, as if it was a woman, one invisible observer loved to walk. He was lonely, but at the same time, he was completely full. Everything he looked at became a part of him. Objects, creatures and their sounds, parts of something whole and the whole itself. The rustle of leaves that originated from the throat of a wild bird and dashed through the ocean bed, and the shadows of ...

After my recovery from breast cancer and the completion of “The Smiley Cut” I continued the journey on my artistic practice with my participation at the residency Return2Ithaca. During the residency I let myself free to connect with the place and get inspired by the fellow artists and curators. I tried to find ways to express my initial question that I arrived to the island with. Where is ...

The last part of my project “I Climbed Across My Two Little Mountaintops” is the video performances. During my research I came across the story of Saint Agatha. Saint Agatha is a virgin martyr of Christian antiquity who had been tortured with the excision of her breasts by the Roman prefect Quintianus. The reason of her torture was her denial to marry him due to her vow of virginity. She is often ...

During my research project “I Climbed Across My Two Little Mountaintops” and the creation of the photographic series I aimed to present alternative narrations on my breasts. I wanted to deconstruct their notion and to be able to see them as an entity that defines my identity as a woman. I aimed to deconstruct the image of the breasts and their stereotypical connotations by creating a dialogue ...

“I Climbed Across My Two Little Mountaintops” is the product of my research work and artistic practice on the female breasts. I started it in 2019 during my MFA in Photography at HDK-Valand. The work consists of photographic series, gifs and video performances. I looked at the political, religious and cultural history of the Western Civilization’s culture and the ways they managed to form the ...

On April 2nd, Der Greif hosted an Instagram live event featuring Nigerian talent Aleruchi Kinika, who was awarded the Guest Room Scholarship for our Guest Room exhibition curated by Tina Campt & Keisha Scarville. The exhibition, titled "Poetics of Darkness," showcases Kinika's surreal photographic work, which tells visual stories through captivating images. One of her standout photographs from ...