Identity Scaffolding

The scaffolding of individual and collective identities is relational to the expanded understanding of photography in a contemporary sense. Having evolved from within representation, the photograph is leaving its genesis behind so as to be recognised as unfolding in practice. It has outgrown its positioning as artefact and is sustaining conversations about our environment as contingent, ephemeral, emergent in flux and in tandem with our grasp of reality, which has steered away from the collapsing methodologies of metaphysics. Constituting a nexus of human communication, the image has been entangled in complex affective relations with human and inanimate actants alike. Similarly to photographs, contemporary perceptions of Self and Other occur beyond such interpretations as ‘fixed’ or ‘permanent’. As has been demonstrated in this room, taking a cross-disciplinary approach to traditional and post-photographic practices picks up an array of conversations about knowledges and individualities which are not readily available to consciousness or traditional signification. Their formation is constantly expanding and may be traced and studied more extensively alongside other artistic practices and critical theories. The image’s engagement in embodied encounters between people, places, objects and technologies reshape and produce anew the perceptions of our environments. Taking a closer look at the effervescence of intervention as well as situating the mechanisms and potency of photography’s agency could permit societies to look beyond the lingering limitations of humanist thought and be re-anchored in the inter-relational reality of today.

Text by Anna Komitska

Room Curators
Peter Ainsworth
Alexandra Wansell
Lai Lam Fave
Juliusz Grabianski

Participating Artists

Aris Patsalidis
Xu Bangte
Edward Reid
Juliusz Grabianski
Adam Roberts
Shue Kabir
Thando May-Mtindi
Millie Hardingham
Maya Campbell
Isabelle Leonard
Isabel Skipp
Lai Lam Fave
Gaia Camattari
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