2022 is underway and though the world remains unsettled we can find joy and focus in our creative lives. The Year of the Tiger is around the corner - a new year for over a billion Chinese around the world. 2022 is about big change. Remember, with change comes opportunity.
2021 was another strange year and 2022 started with an unwanted fizzle instead of a bang. For many 2021 was a period of personal and creative evolution that pushed us to continue to find new ways of artistic expression. For each of us that means something different but what’s important is that we find ways to make our lives creatively stimulating. As creators we are lucky to be driven to do what we love even when the world around us is in a state of flummox. We need art more than ever to keep us grounded as the world spins.
As always we want to hear the voices of those around the world. In see-zeen #3 our selected artists come from Nigeria, USA, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Hungary, UK, South Korea, Brazil, Italy and Finland.
We continue our feature A Visual Dialogue that we introduced in see-zeen #2. This time we present two visual conversations by four photographers we presented in our last issue: Mari Masouridou from Greece and Hyunmin Ryu from South Korea, Michal Semczyszyn from Poland and Alexander Walmsley from the US. None of these four photographers knew each other prior to usintroducing them. You can see the results here.
From the multitude of submissions we received for this issue there were a large number of projects which explore man’s relationship with nature. Collage and self-portraiture were also well represented. While we are open to all genres and themes, these three focus areas represent a large portion of this issue.
Collage perfectly represents our times. The practice of mixing diverse inspirations and techniques is being pushed to new extremes by visionaries, especially in fashion, music, visual arts and cinema.
Our featured artist Joseph Obanubi’s surrealist inspired “visual bricolages” reflect the uncertainty of current times in About Nothing but True Events.Giuseppe Francavilla uses wit and the combined expressions of photography-analog and digital collage in How to Dim a Fire. In his digital mixed collagesLiving as Myself, Jeong Hur reconstructs his own layered life, while Gözde Çöklü intensifies ordinary scenes she observed from her balcony during lockdown through repetition using digital collage.
With the ever growing concern for our environment, an increasing number of artists are questioning man’s relationship with nature. Serena Dzenis portrays industrial construction within the Icelandic landscape hoping to invoke debate about how we want to project ourselves into the future. Austin Cullen exposes us to the natural world via natural history museums and the way they frame the American landscape in A Natural History (Built to be Seen). Young British landscape artist Aisling Edwards intervenes in the landscape then photographs these temporary interventions as evidence of the changes and Cláudio Cruz takes a spiritual approach in Without You I Cease to Exist reminding us that everything is connected.
In his metaphorical story Seeing Through Smoke and Mirrors Domonkos Varga interrogates the truth in our society.
From Mackai Sharp, Jeong Hur and Vilma Leino come three different approaches to the self portrait. The text on teenager Mackai Sharp’s images are a harsh reminder of the sad reality of daily life in present day Canada for a queer teen. In Kill Yourself, he recreates the scenes where he experienced homophobic slurs. In Living as Myself Jeong Hur stages scenes that recreate his perception of his different personalities and Vilma Leino introduces us to her loopy surreal world of trichophbia, the fear of hair, in Hair in the Dish.
Each artist has responded to our interview questions which appear with their project statement. There is much food for thought and we hope it will inspire you.
Thanks to all the photographers who submitted. We are thrilled with our selection of artists and we applaud the work of these emerging photographers committed to their art.
If you want to be part of see-zeen #4 we invite you to submit. Enjoy see-zeen #3. Enjoy the rest of your winter and watch out for issue #4 this spring. See previous issues here Follow us on IG To subscribe to our newsletter you will find the button below in the footer.