Cindy Konits : This Room Will Survive Me - Architecture And Interiority - Elizabeth Avedon

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Résumé :
Superb multi-layered existential documentary

Cindy Konits began photographing herself with an obsolete professional instant camera and expired film after termination of a long psychoanalysis. The camera's features facilitated slow-shutter meditative exposures in direct sunlight and shadow between and within rooms and surrounding landscape. She discovered in her work representations of introspective 'psychic space' in architecture beyond the analytic room. Approaching the threshold of a room she is 'me', a separate entity from the room. Being 'in' the room, however, is exactly the moment the room disappears. Cindy is inside and outside at the same time as perception of touch, sound, and scent of objects in the room fuses her present self with past memory and experience.

These images created with light flooding her body along wall and object contours suggest the expanse of interior self in a room. Through architecture we find ourselves in relation to space and time that is otherwise limitless and endless. Leading architectural theorists and practitioners inform this work, including renowned Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa who said ...I thought that architecture was the buildings out there in the world. I have gradually learned that architecture is a mediation between the world and our minds.

Architecture is more than an engagement with visual aesthetics. This Room Will Survive Me invites viewers to recognize architecture as a stage for choreographed interaction with our personal histories and each other. The main text essay will be written by Mark Sealy, the highly respected British curator, author, photo historian and?director?of Autograph?ABP?in London. Sealy, a longtime collaborator with FotoFest, was also the lead curator of the 2020 FotoFest Biennial African Cosmologies. Additional short essays will be done by FotoFest co-founder Wendy Watriss and FotoFest Executive Director Steven Evans....

Biographie:
Cindy Konits (American, b. 1954) is a lens-based artist exploring family history and identity. She won first prize and second prize in The Photo Review Competition 2021 and 2022 respectively, numerous Julia Cameron, Pollux awards, Honorable Mention at 'Fresh', Klompching Gallery, and exhibited in The Exhibition Lab and Soho Gallery, NYC. Solo exhibitions traveled from The Baltimore Museum of Industry and The Baltimore Jewish Museum with NEA and NEH grants respectively. Her film The Way I See It, nominated Best Documentary Short, screened in 19 international film festivals and her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications.

Jennifer Garza-Cuen (editor) is an artist and Professor of Photography at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She received her MFA in photography and MA in the History of Art and Visual Culture with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design. Garza-Cuen is the recipient of numerous awards. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in the public collections of a range of top calss museums. Garza-Cuen's monograph, Past Paper // Present Marks: Responding to Rauschenberg, in collaboration with Odette England was published by Radius Books 2021.

Gary Van Zante is the recently retired curator of architecture and design and former director of exhibitions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Museum.

Nancy Olsen is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University Borb?la J?sz is Art Historian and Philosopher of Art at Budapest University

Juhani Pallasmaa is a Finnish architect and architectural theorist of world renown. A former professor of architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology, Visiting Professor and Lecturer throughout Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia, he is awardee of 5 honorary doctorates. Pallasmaa is author of over 70 books published in 30 languages and nearly 1000 essays....