|
||
Neil Chowdhury is a visual artist working in digital media and photography. In addition to the Mixed Blood Portraits project, he is currently working on a body of work called Waking from Dreams of India, about the realization of his lifelong dream to travel and explore in his father’s native country. A recurrent theme in Mr. Chowdhury’s work is a visual investigation of the tension between the individual society. His current work applies this insight to his observations of life on the streets of India. As he explains in his 2001 artist’s statement, “This habit of seeing probably arises out of my beginnings in this country as an immigrant infant, raised by parents from two separate and conflicting cultures, England and India. Our family moved like clockwork every two years, further complicating my integration into the society of the various monoculture public schools to which I was constantly trying to adapt myself. Growing up as an outsider forced me to be an observer of social situations as a matter of survival. At first I was not very good at it, and often found myself the butt of ridicule and occasional physical violence. Later, as I grew older and more successfully able to integrate myself into the social world around me, I chose the position of outsider and observer out of long practiced habit, and finally by conscious choice. I realized that this perspective sometimes gave me a greater insight into society, and formed the basis for my creative investigations in photography.” Neil Chowdhury is an assistant professor and program director of photography at Cazenovia College. He has previously taught at Zayed University in the Middle East, in the United States at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. He is also an experienced commercial and industrial photographer. His photographs, video installations and paintings have been exhibited widely in the United States, the Middle East, Europe, Brazil and Cuba. He received his MFA in photography at the University of Washington in 2001.
Françoise Duresse is currently working on the paper bag test, a mixed media project that addresses the stratification of social status based upon skin colour differences, which has continued from one generation to another within the African Diaspora. Her artwork combines self-portraiture with images from photographs and drawings of racial stereotypes to explore the assigned roles played out in the media, which serve to reinforce racial stereotypes of colourism that forms a prison of cultural expectation in our society for people of colour. Ms. Duresse has also developed a surrogate, queen nappy, that allows her to transform the complexity of personal experiences in her world into a poetic dialog. queen nappy focuses on racial slurs reported by the current media, bringing contemporary events into context with history. She juxtaposes queen nappy with collages of racist dialogues, printed text, images, video and performance from history, popular culture, and contemporary events into a visual context. Françoise Duresse is an assistant professor teaching visual arts at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. She has taught at Zayed University in Dubai, UAE, University of Washington in Seattle, Washington and College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan. She has had several painting and mural commissions and exhibited in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. She developed and operated an artist workshop in Mannheim, Germany. She also worked as an artists’ consultant and curator scouting new artistic talents for exhibitions at Kultur Management in Germany. She received a BFA in painting and drawing and a BA in psychology at Wayne State University. She received a MFA in painting from Tyler School of Art Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
|