“If I Had a Hammer”, FotoFest Biennial 2022 central exhibition, Silver Street Studios and Winter Street Studios, Houston, Texas, 24.10.2022 – 06.11.2022
Credit: FotoFest
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.
Central Exhibition co-curated and organized by Steven Evans, Max Fields, and Amy Sadao with curatorial advisory support from Julie Ault, Nora N. Khan, and Jeanne Vaccaro.
Installation View: “I want to bring you around the world, I can’t”
