NAVA MESSAS WAXMAN

Becoming

Photographic sculpture, performance documentation reconstruction, non-archival paper, monitor, moving image, 3 minutes, colour, sound, loop (2014-2022)

This third iteration of Gender and the Lens features work that sometimes subtly and other times explicitly engages with understandings or experiences of gender. The works in this exhibition, like the stream of Iranian protest images, insist on making space for complex discussions about the experiences of oppressed genders. They all focus on people—their bodies, the space they take up, their dynamism, their challenges, and their differences. These images illuminate the influential role photographs have in understanding ourselves in relation to others. Messas-Waxman performs a series of movements presented through key frames printed in a grid formation as a method to consider how the body archives migration. The documentation of her private performance of timed movements includes blurry stills expressing their transitory nature. The print is also crumped adding to the lack of clarity of each moment. The paper used is nonarchival, suggesting the temporality of movement, memory, and position in space.                          -Frances Dorenbaum

Gender and the Lens III  The Feminist Photography Network, curated by Robyn Cumming, Clair Samuel & Liz Ikiriko.