Foam proudly presents the work of a new generation of artists in the group exhibition Foam Talent 2022. The 20 participating photographers address the pressing problems of our times. Together, they explore and extend the boundaries of what photography is today.
As a diverse group of artists, each of them presents their own visual language. Through their works, they critically look at the world around us. They use the photographic medium to question collective affairs and ongoing issues happening in the world. At the same time, they explore how these issues have an impact on a personal level, moving between a local, historical, symbolic, emotional and bodily perspective.
This group of artists uses a wide range of photographic genres to tell their stories. With portraiture and documentary photography, digital created images and archival material, the talents create a space for the viewer to sit with situations and current events, to reflect and respond to.
Complementing the physical experience at Foam, this digital exhibition offers a deeper look at the Talents and their works. What goes on behind the surface? What is the inspiration? What techniques are used? This exhibition combines artistic context with educational perspectives. Read, see, and hear more about the themes and topics and explore, engage, and interact with the works!
The selected photographers for Foam Talent 2022 are: Marwan Bassiouni, Myriam Boulos, Olgaç Bozalp, Laura Chen, Kata Geibl, Lina Geoushy, Marvel Harris, Alexandra Rose Howland, Ange-Frédéric Koffi, Czar Kristoff, Yushi Li, Carla Liesching, Seif Kousmate, Pavo Marinović, Diego Moreno, Donja Nasseri, Ghazaleh Rezaei, Linn Phyllis Seeger, Ritsch Sisters, Donavon Smallwood.
The Foam Talent Programme and the biennial Talent issue of Foam Magazine are supported by the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.
The exhibition is made possible by Kleurgamma Fine-Art Photolab and Oschatz Visuelle Medien.
Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the Gemeente Amsterdam.
In 2022 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and receives a contribution through the Mondriaan Fund from the Ministerie van OCW.
Foam Talent 2022
Artists shaping
the future of photography
Foam
photographers were selected for Foam Talent 2022.
of 20 talents now launched in Foam Talent Digital 2022
Dive deeper with us in the world of Foam Talent 2022.
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Czar Kristoff
To Destroy Is To Build
Demolition, temporality, power, and transformation are themes that run throughout To Destroy is To Build. Czar Kristoff gathered videos of collapsing buildings through the #demolish hashtag on Instagram. The resulting digital collages were printed and placed for viewers to take from the installation. Using the metaphor of power, patriarchy, greed, and violence collapsing, Kristoff urges us to consider both new structures and infrastructures.
True to itself, To Build Is To Destroy proves to be fluid: in this video, follow Czar's instructions to create a zine out of the papers you collected!
Installation view of To Destroy Is To Build at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. Visitors are invited to take a paper home.
Paper airplane folded from a sheet of paper from the installation: an example of the many possible forms and shapes of Kristoff's work.
Myriam Boulos
Tell the Trees to Smile
Myriam Boulos, a Beirut-based photographer, utilises her photography to process the world around her. In 2020, Boulos documented the devastating explosion at Beirut’s port using the city people as her main subject. Together, the portraits, conversations, and journal entries build upon one another to reveal a depth of feeling that, taken as a whole, is indicative of the strength and perseverance that runs through the city.
Marwan Bassiouni
New Western Views
Observing Western media for many years, their often cliché images of Islam drove Marwan Bassiouni to explore the representation of the Muslim religion through the photographic lens. Starting out in the Netherlands with New Dutch Views, Bassiouni since expanded his series to different Western countries (United Kingdom, Switzerland), presented here as the joint series New Western Views. The images are not staged but rather the result of a careful selection determined by mosque architecture and what can be seen from the prayer room windows. By repeating the process of photographing views from inside mosques, Bassiouni aims to inspire a moment of stillness and contemplation; and to suggest a new way of looking at Islam, the Western landscape and their interaction in society today.
Click on each image to view in detail.
New Swiss Views #01, Switzerland 2021. From the series New Swiss Views (2021–…)
New Swiss Views #4, Switzerland 2021. From the series New Swiss Views (2021–…)
New British Views #23, United Kingdom 2021. From the series New British Views (2021–…)
New Dutch Views #33, The Netherlands 2021. From the series New Dutch Views (2018–…)
New Dutch Views #37, The Netherlands 2021. From the series New Dutch Views (2018–…)
Ghazaleh Rezaei
The Martyrs
During the height of the Covid19 pandemic, Ghazaleh Rezaei uncovered her uncle's (Cyrus Bahadori) photographic archive from the Iran-Iraq War, which led her to draw comparisons between the past conflict and the current pandemic. These crises are all tied together by a common thread of grief, fatality, and mourning, illustrating the pandemic as a war against the virus. Using light as her device, Rezaei was able to decontextualise the archival imagery into a commentary on history, culture, and war.
Photography is the process of capturing light. Dark objects absorb more light, reflecting less into the camera, whilst bright object will reflect more light. When you take a picture, light from the scene passes through the camera’s lens and strikes the camera’s film or digital sensor. This is also how light appears in a photograph to people who see it. Inevitably, it can allow us to see things differently. As a result, it can therefore serve a literal and metaphorical sense of shedding light on particular narratives.
In The Martyrs, light pours, both bright and luminous, intervening with the images. As Ghazaleh Rezaei re-photographed her uncle’s images, she employs the use of flash. She reintroduces light into the already existing imagery as a distinct process that, on the surface layer, we see is able to conceal the subject’s identities, emotions or any indication of pain.
Whilst these radiant masks of light protect the heroes' identities, it can also be seen as a visual device that illuminates them. Rezaei intentionally draws parallels to Islamic art, which similarly avoids depicting the likenesses of Saints' faces. Through light, Rezaei’s work shifts between concealing and revealing, assembling and disassembling, emphasising on the heroic and sacred nature of these war victims.
Kata Geibl
There Is Nothing New Under the Sun / See Daylight
As Kata Geibl observes in There Is Nothing New Under the Sun, our contemporary social, political, and economic system is based on a culture of extreme individualism. Geibl presents a critique of our capitalist society through the juxtaposition of her photographs, which are laden with symbolic connotations. Simultaneously reflected in See Daylight, Geibl extends her commentary to the art market and together with her metaphorical language, she paints a sense of reality that raises more questions than answers.
Print these posters for your home (or use as a screen saver)
Donja Nasseri
Woman,
who would be King
Donja Nasseri is an artist who explores her own hybrid, cultural, and gender identity through the lens of her Afghan and Egyptian-German ancestry in Woman, Who Would be King. Nasseri employs digital photomontage to question the conventional depiction of the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, who plays a pivotal role for translating her own personal search. Her investigation, whilst looking to the past, results in a highly futuristic-looking multimedia presentation.
"All the photographs depict [Hatshepsut's] figure or the regions where her temples were built, using double exposures, analogue or digital processes, the landscapes become unnatural."
"In "Woman, who would be King", I deal with different visual materials, such as documentation of collections, old negatives, postcards, stamps, slides and photo films. All of these are carriers that take up and depict Hatshepsut and her past."
"The most radical form of erasure of the queen's name, inscription and figure on a relief was accomplished by hooking or grinding away, leaving a blank, rough or smoothly polished surface on the stone, which was then not further altered.
The "act of destruction" that took place in Hatshepsut is similarly continued in my visual material. I combine pictorial material, cut, scratch, crease or overlay layers."
"These photographs, for example, relate the back of a figure of Hatshepsut to Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, where Hatshepsut has been given a place. Judy Chicago places her in contemporary society and thus in a feminist, contemporary position."
–texts by Donja Nasseri
My head is gone, my words remain:
read them, my words are written in the obelisk,
Do you hear my Voice? Upright and proud,
I am noble
the first of the noble women.
Hathor the cow goddess is carrying and kissing me. Apis the bull god follows us.
I am hailed as the future “King”.
I don't belong to anybody, we are both.
Both masculine and feminine , a special occasion is happening,
it is an Adoption of male attributes,
I am proud to be the Daughter of RE,
I am Proud to be the Son of Nut
I am Proud to be the Daughter of Nut
I am Proud to be the Mistress of the circuit of Aten.
I am Proud to be the Son of RE
I am Proud to be the Daughter of Amun- Re
As a Whole:
The first of the noble women.
–excerpt from "The first of the noble women or: the Problem of an Obelisk" by Donja Nasseri
Alexandra Rose Howland
Leave and Let Us Go
Over the past decade, Alexandra Rose Howland has made her home in the Middle East, where she has produced work that seeks to expand our understanding of geopolitical events. In Leave and Let Us Go, Howland combines an abundance of visual material, all collected through Iraqi citizens smartphones, to present a radically modern and diversified view on daily life in a war-torn country.
Abdullah Dhiaa Al Deen, b. 1993
Abdulrahmann Al Ghazaly, b. 1990
Abeer Alzoubaidy, b. 1983
Ahmed Al Kaabi, b. 1998
Ahmed Al Majid, b. 1994
Ahmed Muhammad Rovan, b. 1992
Ahmed Muhammad Shahatha, b. 1990
Al- Hassan Hasan, b. 2001
Ali Hussein Abood, b. 1951
Ali Hashim Hadid, b. 1989
Ali Al Karim, b. 2000
Ali Kridi, b. 1997
Ali Al Jaffal, b. 1957
Anonymous, b. 2001
Anas Abdul Rida Yousef Faras, b. 1977
Anonymous, b. 1998
Ansam, b. 1952
Ari Hewa Muhialdeen, b. 1994
Batool Farouq, b. 1963
Elaf Hasan, b. 1995
Esraa Ali, b. 1999
Father Thabet, b. 1976
Fatima Farooq, b. 1994
Haider Karim Agil, b. 1967
Heshu Ahmed, b. 1993
Jack Omar, b. 2000
Jumana Muntaz, b. 1988
Mahdi Farhan, b. 1996
Mariam Farouq, b. 1995
Maysoon Al Naqshbandi, b. 1962
Moaamel Haider Karim, b. 2000
Mohammed Sami, b. 1994
Mohammed Sawaf, b. 1982
Mohannad Taha, b. 1990
Anonymous, b. 1986
Muna Al Jaffal, b. 1994
Muntadher Amal, b. 1997
Mustafa Salim, b. 1991
Salam Musa, b. 1984
Sara Anas, b. 1996
Sarmed Kalel Ahmed, b. 1985
Segar Shahb Ahmed, b. 1983-2019
Shifaa Mohamed, b. 1999
Sheikh Farhan Mahdel Abed Al Amiri, b. 1955-2020
Anonymous, b. 1962
Teba Sadiq, b. 2000
Wael Mukhilas Georges, b. 1982
Wedyan Jalal, b. 1999
Zahraa Al Rubaiee, b. 1999
Zaid Saad, b. 1991
Zainab Al Adeeb, b. 1998
video work
Leave and Let Us Go
Pavo Marinović
Marble Ass
Former Yugoslavia (now known as the Balkans) has long projected a robust and desired ideal of masculinity. Pavo Marinović compiles a study that examines the fabricated image of hyper-masculinity using self-portraits, family archives, popular culture, and other sources. As traces of architectural elements run throughout Marinović’s images, it is a nod that signifies masculinity is constructed and always changing.
Installation view, ECAL (École cantonale d'art Lausanne), 2020
“Pavo Marinović's Marble Ass is a multidisciplinary study that uses self-portraits, family archives, popular culture, and architecture to study the archetypal composition and transformation of masculinities in the former Yugoslavia, now the Balkans. These masculinities are straight, but necessarily open to being desired. These masculinities are nationalistic, but constitutively haunted, referencing as they do Yugoslavian national pasts that never were, that were only ever dreamed into life through family archives and popular media, both source material for the artist...”
“...By making his body akin to architectural elements (like communist monuments or housing projects), Marinović’s contorted form underscores not only that masculinity is always a forced perspective but that it is always under construction. Indeed, the installation of the project brings this reading to the fore. Photographs are juxtaposed against one another, and some do not fully fill their frames, suggesting scaffolding and incomplete or ongoing renovations. Still others are laid out on the gallery floor, conveying, again, construction-as-process, making it unclear whether the exhibition is going up or coming down and underscoring that the artist views photography as a decidedly three-dimensional research practice...”
“...Rather than merely adopt a critical stance towards these iconographies, so that he might intellectually deconstruct them, Marinović instead inserts himself in them. In his photographic collages, he puts himself both objectively and subjectively into weird, uncomfortable positions: his body is contorted, his queer identity an awkward fit into architectures of masculinity that, like Eastern European architectures writ large, convey a dogged functionalism over and above any humanistic desire to appropriately scale a space to the people who actually inhabit it...”
“...Masculinity, Marinović seems to say, is always a matter of forced perspective. In many of the images, portions of Marinović's figure, in various stages of dress and with camera and uniformed garb both in view, awkwardly fills the image. His body interacts in largely undefined spaces, seemingly suspended: an extended leg stretches towards the viewer; fingers and shaved head meet their mirrored reflections; glimpses of nude skin flow into the grey-blue and olive hues of a uniform whose folds in turn frame the camera that captures the image...”
—Text fragments by Shaka McGlotten
Laura Chen
Words from Dad
In this moving image piece, Laura Chen shows the aging of her grandfather, leading the spectator through a timeline of his life.
Memory and identity are recurring themes in Laura Chen’s work. Her ongoing series Words from Dad is a personal exploration of her Dutch-Chinese heritage. Using her family album photographs and stories of her Grandfather’s life, Chen retraces her Grandfather’s journey that led him to the Netherlands. Her tactile approach is both a metaphor and visual representation that invites us to look closer at the rich, layered history.
Making of Words from Dad:
Laura Chen and her father cut and weave the photographs at Foam in preparation of Foam Talent 2022.
Seif Kousmate
WAH'A واحة
In his practice, Seif Kousmate fuses elements of documentary and fine art photography. With this, he creates a distinct visual language to express ongoing societal challenges. Wah’a, Arabic for oasis, is Kousmate’s exploration of the destructive repercussions climate change poses to Morocco’s oasis ecosystem. Using native, organic elements and techniques such as fire and acid to symbolise time, the work sheds light on the rapid changes and signals where the future could be heading.
Palm tree roots in the ground weep
for their fruits at the surface
Palm tree roots in the ground weep
as their water springs are sold
Palm tree roots in the ground lament
because of those who used to rest in their shade
Palm tree roots in the ground weep
for being sold for cheap
Palm tree roots in the ground weep
for those it grew its piths for
Palm tree roots in the ground weep
for those who had forgotten its favor
Palm tree roots in the ground weep as its water basin is sold
We will never forget who caused this tragedy
—Translation of a poem by Ibrahim Rajeaa from the Oasis of Tighmert
Ange-Frédéric Koffi
Le Grand Voyage—Version Courte
Ange-Frédéric Koffi
Ange-Frédéric Koffi
Notions of displacement and circulation are often explored in Ange-Frédéric Koffi’s work. Since 2015 Koffi has embarked on several trips exploring the relationship between people and road in his ongoing project Le Grand Voyage - Version Courte . The road is symbolic, illustrating how West Africa thrives in the course of everyday life. The journey he depicts in his work is fragmented, leaving us to fill in the blanks with our own ideas about what came in between and what lies ahead.
Linn Phyllis Seeger
0N0E
0N0E reflects the coordinates of Null Island, a square metre located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. At the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator, it is the centre of the world’s geocoded map mistakes. Despite its geographic location, Null Island does not exist. It is a fictitious place that Linn Phyllis Seeger uses as a starting point to examine our modes of communication.
Carla Liesching
Good Hope
How are images we see in the media shaped by political circumstances? Carla Liesching uses collage-making and photomontage to explore the history of Cape of Good Hope. The artist employs a wide range of media to challenge the preservation of South Africa's colonial heritage. Apartheid-era trade journals, tourist pamphlets and other ephemera are pieced together, prompting us to question our preserved memory presented in archives.
*scroll down inside the frames with the collages to view them completely. Scroll down outside the frames to continue the exhibition.
"The Rhodes Must Fall (RMF or Fallist) movement made global headlines on 9 March 2015, when Political Science student, Chumani Maxwele, carried a bucket of human faeces from Khayelitsha–an impoverished 'township' or 'Black Area' designated as such under apartheid law–and threw it on a central statue commemorating Cecil John Rhodes, a nineteenth-century British imperialist and politician who 'bequeathed' to UCT the land on which it is built."
"Maxwele's act signified mounting unrest on campus, resulting in occupations, walkouts, sit-ins, barricades and various symbolic happenings. (...) One month later on 9 April, the statue was removed and its granite pedestal was boarded up with grey plywood."
"RMF mobilised widespread direct action at universities across the country, opposing institutional racism and the continued colonial structuring of education and knowledge-production. Goals were to be realised not only in the removal of colonial symbols, but also in a counter-curriculum, and tangible solutions to the problems of socio-economic exclusion and unequal access to learning along racial lines."
"The encasing of the foundation gives an impression that Rhodes has been unseated, yet more telling is the shadow of Rhodes spray-painted anonymously on the ground immediately after the removal. The painted shadow spreads 'from the base of the empty plinth, descending the full flight of stairs, ending in a stooped shoulder, a curved head resting in the crook of a fist.' This tracing hints at the remaining issues of institutional racism and financial exclusion—as a poster read the day the Rhodes statue was removed: 'Next, the invisible statues.'"
–excerpts from Carla Liesching's research
Diego Moreno
Malign Influences / The Holy Mountains
At first glance, Diego Moreno’s family photos and archival postcards seem to be transformed into an unnerving state. Eerie and sinister from the outside. Coloured pencils, graphite, Indian ink and other graphic interventions on his photographs illustrate a rebellious act, a way to construct new realities and reflect his own identity. Looking deeper, we start to question what’s so devilish about his work.
Diego Moreno is currently working on a new book in which the monstruous figures that were created by reworking photos from his family archive and an archive of Swiss postcards, return. This time he places the images from Malign Influences and The Holy Mountains in the context of a baby album, further building on the narrative of the monstruous family.
Marvel Harris
Inner Journey
Marvel Harris’s self-portraits trace the starting point of his gender transition, that would later evolve into a much larger introspective journey. Photography, for him, is a tool for self-reflection and could harness the complexity of his emotions. Intimate and vulnerable, his work can serve as a channel for the exchange of experiences and inspire our own journey of self-exploration.
Over the years, Marvel Harris also captured moving images of himself. This edit expresses the multitude of emotions that he experienced on his journey.
Lina Geoushy
مش عيب Shame Less
A Protest Against Sexual Violence
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, Lina Geoushy started tracing personal stories illustrating how Egyptian women have long internalised a culture of sexual harassment and violence. Employing a collaborative and tactile approach, she layers the complexities of every individual story, where portraits and handwritten stories come together, as one. As a result, their collective voices form a community of support and solidarity.
TW: the following texts contain stories of sexual abuse and violence.
"I am now 64 years old, when I was in university, I used to live in a hostel. At the end of each week, I used to go to my grandparents house. One day, while I was coming back from my grandfather house to the hostel, I got into a bus full of people. One of the men on the bus started moving towards me and standing very close and stuck himself to me. I felt something abnormal was happening. I felt ashamed of what happened to me."
"I was ten or eleven when this started happening. My cousin used to live with us and he is 10 years older than me. He would touch me occasionally in inappropriate ways when my mother and brothers were not around. I would wake up during the night to find him in my bed next to me touching me with his penis. As soon as I would wake up he would run away. I was too young, I couldn't process it, I felt angry and scared. I felt that I couldn't feel safe, not even at home. The hardest part was my parent's reaction or lack of reaction. I felt that I didn't matter, not even to my family".
"I was in the street bending over to pay a cab driver through the window, a man walking by touched my ass with his finger. I exploded into tears and went up to my house in silence".
“While I was in university, I was walking toward the train station with a friend heading home in the afternoon. An old man that was walking his young daughter back from school bumped into me and grabbed my chest. Instead of supporting us, people in the street started saying “let him go.. you are proving that you are not well behaved”.
“While I was walking alone in a long street, a man in his fifties started following me with his car for a long period and making hand gestures for me to get into the car with him. I was afraid so I crossed to the other side of the road, so he went around with his car and continued to follow me saying “come in and I will satisfy you and give you what you want”. In fear of him getting close to me, I tried to walk away from the car and deeper into the pavement”.
"Walking home, a man on the street walked towards me and stroked my vagina. I just froze off and continued walking home."
"Walking home from work. A teenager on a bicycle grabbed my chest and quickly cycled away before I could scream."
“Intimate relationships are private, and they should be based on mutual love and feelings. However, my ex-husband didn’t consider feelings and foreplay that preceded that.
I used to be sleeping and he would take off my clothes and get intimate as if he was raping me. I hated sexual and intimate relationships because I got hurt emotionally and physically. I used to tremble and get feverish from the psychological and emotional pressure. It was devoid of feelings and happened against my will”.
Ritsch Sisters
The Act of Sitting
From the series The Act of Sitting © The Ritsch Sisters
From the series The Act of Sitting © The Ritsch Sisters
From the series The Act of Sitting © The Ritsch Sisters
From the series The Act of Sitting © The Ritsch Sisters
What would happen if we were forced to sit in isolation for an extended period of time? During the height of the pandemic, the Ritsch Sisters, who frequently explore physical, spatial, and emotional tensions, invited individuals to collaborate on their own interpretation of sitting. The resulting photographs, which were all captured via video chats around the world, reflect on how the act of sitting is transformed into a political and performative act.
© The Ritsch Sisters
choose a sitting instruction and make your own self portrait inspired by the Ritsch Sisters.
Make your own seated portrait
Donavon Smallwood
Languor
Donavon Smallwood’s early ambitions to become an archaeologist and poet have influenced his approach to exploring themes of identity, nature, and human connection; all captured through the distinct use of black and white photography. Amidst the pandemic, Smallwood found himself retreating to Central Park. His exploration into both place and people results in a poetic series to envision black tranquillity.
From the series 'Languor' by Donavon Smallwood
From the series 'Languor' by Donavon Smallwood
No matter how estranged I become,
the luster of my gaze will never fade.
From flesh to nerve,
I love you.
Additional to his still portraits, Donavon Smallwood also created moving imagery.
From the series 'Languor' by Donavon Smallwood
From the series 'Languor' by Donavon Smallwood
Yushi Li
Paintings, Dreams and Love
Gender, desire and eroticism are central to Yushi Li’s work. In Paintings, Dreams and Love, Li muses on spectatorship in classical paintings by making Western men her subjects. She places herself into the reconstructed scenes as a way to intervene with existing representations and recreate her own portrayal of desire.
The Nightmare from the series Paintings, Dreams and Love by Yushi Li
The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781
The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781
Narcissus with a Mirror by Yushi Li
Venus at a Mirror, Peter Paul Rubens, 1615
The Death of Actaeon, Titian, c. 1559-1575
The Death of Actaeon by Yushi Li
The Room, Balthus, 1953
Olgaç Bozalp
Home: Leaving One for Another
from the series Home: leaving one for another by Olgaç Bozalp
Cultural identity is a key theme through Olgaç Bozalp’s work. After leaving Turkey to pursue a career in London, he was intrigued to learn what urges people to flee or migrate from their homeland. In the works he weaves together his documentary style and staged installations, using emblematic objects to reflect personal discovery and his own experience as a migrant.
From the series 'Home: leaving one for another' by Olgaç Bozalp
"I lived in the same town until I was nineteen when I left to study abroad. At the time none of my peers had seen the outside walls of our town, so for me it was a cool and exciting opportunity.
I never really had an opportunity to travel elsewhere until eight years ago when my dad offered to take me on a trip to Japan as a way of spending time together. When I got to Japan, it opened my eyes to other worlds and cultures, and the trip was the catalyst of my travel career.
After visiting new locations, and seeing the sites of where people once lived, I started to question why people wanted to move from one place to another. When I moved back to my home-country for a year, I started to understand the formative experiences from my childhood and what the concept of home meant to me. I started observing other people in their environments and questioned what home meant for them.
Thus, the idea for Home: Leaving One for Another was born. It’s part documentary, part abstract—a series of understanding our place in the world."
—Olgaç Bozalp
Olgaç Bozalp talks about his zine-making practice and inspiration for his projects.
Foam Talent 2022
Foam
