UPDATE 14/09/2018: due to illness, Léon Kruijswijk is prevented and will therefore not speak. Instead Foam curator Mirjam Kooiman will give an extensive introduction to the male gaze.
During this evening, photographers Senta Simond and Paul Mpagi Sepuya talk about their work. Both artists use friends and acquaintances for their portraits. The work of Simond revolves around the intimate approach to the female body. Sepuya's models are from the Queer community.
In the visual arts, the female gaze and the Queer gaze have long been subordinate to the Male Gaze, a deep-rooted gaze from the perspective of the white man. Art historian Léon Kruijswijk explains what that masculine eye is and how it becomes less and less dominant.
PROGRAMME AND SPEAKERS:
ABOUT LÉON KRUIJSWIJK
Léon Kruijswijk is a freelance curator and editor. His professional and personal fields of interest in the arts are themes such as art & politics, post-colonialism, transcultural art, LGBTQI + & gender and identity. In 2013 he received his MA Cultural Heritage-Museum Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS
Senta Simond's work from the series Rayon Vert focuses on an intimate approach to the female body and portraiture. Her photographs feature a circle of acquaintances and respond to existing, and too often clichéd, representation of femininity. The level of trust between the model and the photographer is high. Simond tries to capture the intimate moments, undirected. The portrayed women are strong and soft at the same time.
In his exhibition Double Enclosure, Sepuya enters into a dialogue with himself as artist, his subjects and the spectator. He comments on the medium of photography as a construction of longing: the longing to record things, to look, to touch and to keep. Through a combination of draped fabric, careful framing and layered images of existing work, the viewer sees arms, thighs, torsos and hands, but rarely the whole body of the subject. In this way, the spectator is visually challenged to tease apart the construction of the image. With this visual strategy in which he references a homo-erotic visual culture, he explores the productive and critical power of longing as an essential part of his work.
Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Gemeente Amsterdam, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.