WUNRN
Open Society Foundations – 23rd Installment of the Moving Walls Photography Exhibition Series
Moving Walls Documentary Photo Projects – Journeys Toward Freedom, Safety & Self-Determination
By Glenna Gordon
April 21, 2015 -
By Siobhan Riordan
Among the varied photography selections is a unifying line of
connection emerges. Whether it is the written creation of fantasy from reality,
the formidable journey to escape slavery, or the dissonance between body and
soul, each of these projects highlights the spaces—both physical and
psychological—inhabited by people pursuing freedom, safety, and
self-determination.
The five artists and projects selected are as follows:
- Glenna Gordon, Sin Is a Puppy
that Follows You Home: Romance Novelists in Northern Nigeria. Gordon
presents an intimate view of a small but significant group of Northern
Nigerian women who write romance novels, and whose outspoken and at times
subversive stories speak to ideas of escape and fantasy amid the reality
of conflict within and outside their homes.
- Dionysis Kouris, Transit
in Columbia Athens. Kouris depicts North African migrants
living in limbo inside the once preeminent, now abandoned Columbia Records
building in Athens, Greece.
- Liam Maloney, Texting Syria. Maloney
features imagery from an abandoned slaughterhouse in Akkar, Lebanon, where
16 Syrian families seek refuge from conflict, shown alongside text
messages they send to their loved ones, who are under siege in Homs.
- Jeanine Michna-Bales, Through Darkness to Light:
Seeking Freedom on the Underground Railroad. From the
cotton plantations just south of Natchitoches, Louisiana, all the way
north to the United States–Canadian border, Michna-Bales imagines what the
long road to escape slavery and reach freedom may have looked like through
the eyes of those who made the journey.
- Shahria Sharmin, Call Me Heena. Sharmin’s
portrait series on Bangladeshi hijras—who identify as either “third
gender” or transgender women—is a poetic reflection on their hopes and
dreams as they navigate their lives in Bangladesh and India.
Moving Walls 23 will be open to the public at the Open
Society Foundations in New York starting October 22, 2015.